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
GPU Performance
As said in the previous section, we'll look at game-based benchmarks to get a better idea of how the Snapdragon 801's Adreno 330 GPU performs.
Once again, there are really no results that stand out. I suspect that the metal frame helps to prevent thermal throttling in short benchmarks, but in most scenarios this doesn't really play out and there's no real way to establish long term performance as the GFXBench rundown test doesn't complete properly.
NAND Performance
NAND performance has been an ongoing issue since we first illustrated how poor NAND could easily become a massive detriment to user experience. While sequential reads and writes are generally at a good level these days, it’s the random read and write tests that can be incredibly poor, and these are often a good indicator of overall UI performance as something like installing applications can make a device unusable if storage performance isn’t good enough. In order to test this, we turn to Androbench with a few custom settings to best represent performance.
While the new Moto X doesn't quite top the previous Moto X in random write speeds, it's unlikely that the storage solution is worse. I found that the data and system partitions now use ext4, which means that the performance gains we saw with f2fs are gone. I'm not sure why Motorola decided to change back to ext4 given the performance gains that come with f2fs, but possible reasons include unforeseen conditions where f2fs could result in data loss compared to ext4 or difficulties in integrating f2fs support on Android. At any rate, the new Moto X is one of the best performers in this category, which should keep performance high after a year or two of use.
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Dirty_Punk - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
one thing that I can't understand, is why on Anandtech Iphone has such good battery life when ALL PEOPLE OF THE WORLD can demonstrate that iPhone battery life sucks... in all tests iPhone 5/5s are very near to LG G2 (at worst a 30% lower), that in real life have at least the double of the battery of iPhones....oscarnyc - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
while I wouldn't go so far as to say that iPhone battery life 'sucks' I share your surprise at how well it does in AT's laboratory testing vs. real life experience, where, in my experience, it is little better than the current gen Moto X.aman.agx - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
It looks like the benchmarks are targetting select functions while shutting down all other background processes. So they are not reflective of your real life experience. So for example the contextual services on moto x might be eating up much less battery overall than something similar on an iphone. But if you shut down both of those, i phone battery will seem like a giant.melgross - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
That's not true. It doesn't suck. It's not as good as the best devices out there, but it's better than most. I tend to get a full day out of my 5, and I usually use it fairly often.There's a lot of anti Apple prejudice on this site from posters. It's really sad.
spikebike - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
So motorola decided to give consumes the worst of both worlds. Thicker to allow for changing the backplate, but somehow not allowing changing the battery. To make matters worse they epoxied in a poor battery. So the result is a $500 disposable phone, with poor battery life, and you get to throw it away when the $15 battery dies.soccerballtux - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
honestly I feel like this review was pretty harsh. The camera isn't horrible, the AMOLED screen enables extensive black background screen on, the battery life is good enough, the phone has great software...so why so much hate?lostleaf - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Josh, can you comment on whether the display is viewable with polarized sunglasses in both portrait and landscape? Also does this phone have aptx?soccerballtux - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
good call, I've noticed this on my phones lately. What's up with that?Impulses - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
It's basically a result of how polarization works, grab a cheap camera lens polarizer and play with it a little. I think phones usually prioritize portrait use, which generally makes sense, but sucks for looking at navigation (in landscape) with polarized sunglasses.Alex J. - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Thank you for yet another detailed review and for saving me money and time. As a previous owner of first-gen Moto X it's pretty disappointing to see that new Moto X is barely better in some aspects, and in some it is actually a regression. Most importantly, it still has horrible battery life and mediocre camera. As much as I love "Active Display" I'm afraid I will have to look at other flagships, with better battery life and better cameras.