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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editorsorgtfo - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
IOS lockscreen notifications light up the screen for a short "glance time" without any handwaving. And yes, they murder stock Android, although L is supposed to remedy this?"It's hard to really explain because on the surface it seems rather mundane but after using Moto Display it's clear just how much time it saves. The glance time is just right to view notifications and the hand wave/approach action is effortless compared to pressing a home button or tapping the display."
editorsorgtfo - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
PS: IOS Lockscreen notifications don't need a separate low power cpu to preserver the battery, even without AMOLED.erikiksaz - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
The iphones don't need a separate low power CPU for the lockscreen notifications because they display *once*, then it goes dark until you manually pick up the phone.In the chance that you're not there to see the phone go off, Moto's implementation is superior.
BillT2014 - Saturday, October 4, 2014 - link
It's a very interesting review but so badly written. 25% is just unnecessary padding. Do you guys think we have that much time to waste?ritwik - Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - link
But when you compare Moto X (2nd Gen) with Honor 6 you can see the difference that what Honor 6 is offering at such a reasonable price. You can see the difference here: http://wp.me/p5cjTD-critwik - Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - link
I still feel my Huawei's Honor 6 is much superior to this device at a much better ratebadcoder - Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - link
does headset comes along with new moto x 2014 box ...? or we should buy headset alone...badcoder - Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - link
And what is the output size of voltage from stock charger of new Moto x 2014.... ?Klug4Pres - Thursday, January 15, 2015 - link
My comment on this review has been deleted - why?I posted a comment soon after publication, essentially saying something along the lines of "tiny non-removeable battery, no SD card, poor camera, oh well, I suppose it is a patriotic buy for Americans". This has vanished. Are the forums being censored now for un-American remarks or something?