John Sculley is making new entries in the smartphone market with Obi Worldphone, a new company which he and Robert Brunner, the Ammunition design founder have launched together. Sculley the former Apple CEO from 1983 to 1993 is most famous for being the Pepsi-Cola CEO before Jobs recruited him. Sculley is making sure that less expensive phones don’t compromise on the design. He is doing that with two Android based phones which actually look quite interesting, they are to be sold in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and to be priced in the mid-range from $129 to $199. The models are the SF1 and the SF1.5 and will be available for purchase in October and are aimed at people around 25 years old loving in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

“Obi has taken the best of Silicon Valley—innovations in design, state-of-the-art technology and high standards for manufacturing—and fused them into beautiful, powerful tools at attractive prices.” – Sculley

Obi Worldphone, which is the full name for the company and the phones are designed in San Francisco and both names are related to the area the SF1 for San Francisco and SJ1.5 for San Joes. The phones aren’t available in the US but heavily focus on design.

“to address the market need between high-design smartphones at high prices and generic smartphones at low prices.”

Obi SF1

The SF1 phone (above) is the most expensive of the two and is constructed of a fibreglass body with a large 5-inch display running at 1920 x 1080 with Corning Gorilla Glass. It also runs the latest version of Android, 5.0.2 Lollipop and packs at 1.5GHz 8-core Qualcomm MSM8939 Snapdragon 615 with Adreno 405 GPU and 2GB RAM. The camera, on paper at least seems pretty good at 13MP with flash and the front camera will be good for selfies at 5MP also with a flash. Version 802.11n WiFi, so no 802.11ac here. The battery is a large offering at 3,000mAh.

The SF1 is $199 for 2GB RAM and 16GB storage or $249 for 3GB RAM and 32GB storage. Being an Android phone, it also has a slot for a microSD card slot which allows for another 64GB to be added.

Obi SJ1.5

The SJ1.5 has a odd name but the red and black phone is the cheaper model starting at $129 which includes 16GB storage. This phone, strangely has a newer version of Android at 5.1 and is also a 5-inch screen with a lower resolution at 1280 x 720 and has Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The internals are, as expected slightly slower with a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6580. The WiFi is the same at 802.11n. The battery is exactly the same size as the SF1 at 3,000mAH. The camera is 8MP with flash and the front facing camera is 5MP.

The SJ1.5 is $129 with 1GB RAM and 16GB of storage, an option for 32GB is also available.

Release

Both phones will be available in October in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa, Pakistan, Turkey, and India. The SF1 starts at $199/£130 and the SJ1.5 starts at $129/£80