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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coder543 - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Nope.Flunk - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
That's right, it's only been 39 nears since the "Metric Conversion Act" of 1975. Not 100 years.theuglyman0war - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
Not sure but wasn't the Metric Conversion Act a direct response to some initial action made by Woodrow Wilson? At least that is what I was taught in grade school in the 70's.What is really irksome is that despite there being a massive campaign by school systems to make the date where we were actually getting a handle on the metric conversion at the time...
Because all the "grown ups" at the time were waving their hands and running around like chickens yelling "it's useless!" "it's useless!" the whole program died an unfair death even though we were learning and understanding the world in metric just fine!
( now that I am 50 and forgot how to look at the world in units of 10 it is officially useless! )
keithzg - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Yeah, the resistance by "grown ups" to the Metric system was, and continues to be, pretty ridiculous. I mean, units of 10? However will I conceptualize that?!?! It's not like it equals the count of my fingers, or my numerical system is based on that or anything!melgross - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
Actually, it was back in 1866 that Congress passed a law requiring businesses and government to convert to metric as soon as possible, and to begin teaching it in schools. Unfortunately, no one paid attention.usernametaken76 - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
What size screen does your phone have again?soccerballtux - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
ouchhhhhhh heheRatman6161 - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
My fellow Americans: 1 inch = approximately 25mm. But really does it matter? The numbers are just so you can compare it to other phones so as long as all the reviews use a consistent unit of measure, why does it matter? Just saying. If it does matter to you, wip our your calculator.Arkive - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Wow. I was born and raised in America and even I am astonished by this comment. Seriously, we are not the only ones reading these articles, plus, metric is clearly better than our randomly generated units of measurement.Fergy - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
If you give someones height as 5 feet 2 inch it is even worse.1 feet = 30.48cm, 1 inch = 2.54cm
5x30.48cm=152.4cm + 2x2.54cm=5.08cm
152.4cm+5.08cm=157.48cm
So that is 157.48cm or 1.5748m. I get that you grew up with the imperial system but the metric system is so much easier to use and it is the default for science.