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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darwinosx - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
This MotoX won't be remembered by anyone.The iPhone 6 makes it a nonstarter.
2kfire - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
Am I the only one that noticed the HTC E8 in some of the charts? Does that mean there's an upcoming review?!? How I'd love for that to get NAM bands...aman.agx - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
This is a bechmark review. Nowhere in quality as compared to the last year moto x review. Anyone can run benchmark and post the results.And i find it a bit hard to believe that samsung galaxy s5 running with the same soc will give better performance than a stock android phone in real life. Which leads me to think that tests here are working on individual components. Like shutting down everything else and running a browser. You dont do that in real life. So thats not a fair assessment.
Battery life also turns out different in real life where there are multiple resources vying for the battery. Nowhere that assessment.
This review seems tilted to me. New apple networking of the website trying to kill the most eligible competition? Its possible.
Impulses - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Killing background stuff is the only way to make results easily repeatable tho, and Samsung bakes in a lot of optimisation despite the bloat they also shovel in.Morawka - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
What app is that your using for GPS / GNSS accuracy? anyone?JoshHo - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
GPS Test by Chartcross.John Gordon - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
Great in depth review, thank you.DeathBecomesMe - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
We've found the successor to the 2013 Moto x, and it is the iPhone 6johnny_boy - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
I still think 1080p on a 5" screen is a dumb waste. This phone should be shipping with no less than 3GB RAM (every flagship should by now) and there's no excuse for any flagship android phone not to have a microSD card slot. Also, why didn't they go with Snapdragon 805? I know the difference isn't that big a deal right now, but Amazon's 8.9" tablet is already using it.DeathBecomesMe - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
16gb and 32gb is idiotic. I have the 16 now and hover around 2 gigs free. Dear phone manufactures: most people don't have unlimited data anymore!!