The New Motorola Moto X (2nd Gen) Review
by Joshua Ho on September 17, 2014 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Motorola
- Android
- Mobile
CPU and General Performance
By now, the choice of SoC has become a major focus in every smartphone. While it may not be clear how to use more compute with every generation, it’s generally accepted that stronger CPU and GPU performance is better, especially if it means that there is a power advantage in race to sleep tasks. In the case of the new Moto X we see a Snapdragon 801 SoC with CPU clocked at 2.5 GHz and a GPU clocked at 578 MHz. At this point, there's really not too much to talk about in this SoC as we've reviewed multiple devices with the same exact part.
Currently, our test suite relies upon a combination of browser and gaming benchmarks to get a good idea of total performance. However, it’s important to note that the Android results are only comparable to other Android phones as the stock browser will have specific optimizations that aren’t found in Chrome. We’ll start with the browser benchmarks first.
In the browser benchmarks, we see that the new Moto X falls right where we expect it to for the Snapdragon 801. It's plenty fast, and I don't expect any differences in CPU performance between Snapdragon 801 and 805 devices. This is unlikely to be a point of differentiation until Snapdragon 810 and beyond come into play. We'll take a look at Basemark OS II next, which is a general system performance benchmark.
Here, we once again see that there's not much different in terms of performance. We'll turn to the gaming benchmarks next to get a good idea of what to expect from the GPU.
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semo - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
Anandtech also hate upgraded aftermarket batteries (by giving their support to sealed batteries in phones)jjj - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Good job at not trying to ignore the negatives or spin them into positives.You should factor in the price in your conclusions even if many might not care about price.
Wishing4more - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Josh, could you explain Auto-boost? Under what conditions is it activated? Can it be activated manually or only automatically via a minimum ambient light senor reading? Thanks!JoshHo - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
It's activated if auto brightness is on and the reading for the ambient light sensor is high enough.Wishing4more - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
Does it significantly improve outdoor visibility? That was one of my biggest issues with the original X.JoshHo - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
It should be noticeably better.sjohnam - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
the worst review i have ever read, now spec-sheet days are gone.. I want practical results. Everyone hated the 1st Gen Moto X, but the tweaks motorola did to that everyone became a Fan. I can bet after what motorola did with with S4 dual core processor.. so called X8 computing the new X won't let that reputation down I want a smartphone that is good practically.. not on PAPER. Infact some tasks are accomplished faster on MOTO E than S5. And most importantly first learn how to write a review. It's not essay competition. 10 Pages still.. outcome nothing.pateras - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
"The latter seems to be true all of the time though, as so far with this strategy Motorola has been one of the first to release new Android OS updates."This has certainly not been my experience. 4.4.3 came out in early June, and 4.4.4 two weeks later. My Moto-X never got 4.4.3, and didn't get 4.4.4 until August. This is my first Android, though, so maybe 6 weeks is considered a short wait.
aman.agx - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
It depends on which network you are on. Verizon is usually the last to provide the updates. People on at&t or tmobile got it in two weeks.aman.agx - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
Also you were still the fastest to get it on your network i bet.