Moto X (Is Out) [8.01.2013]

[thedosbox]

dual will just get slower.
its like when people said "an overclocked e8400 is fine for now, therefor buy it"
I went with the ph2 965BE, oc'd to 4Ghz, and am still future proof because i have 4 cores not 2.

/facepalm

Here's a hint: the Moto X uses an Adreno 320, the same as the HTC One.

 

[hans007]

the MotoX has new silicons. I don't understand the reasoning that some say this has "old hardware".

Isn't the die size the same on the Moto X as all the new Snapdragons? Dualcore is in no way worse than quadcore.

this is the same crap we went through when PCs went quad. bunch of geeks saying they need the most number of cores even though its not really needed.


my computer at home is a core i3 2350m or something. dual core. works great for an actual PC. theres only so much threading that goes on in most apps and dual core is fine for a phone.

if anything we'd be better off with high clocked dual cores. i'd rather have a dual core snapdragon s4 at 1.7ghz like the moto x, than say a 1.3 ghz quad tegra3 like say my nexus 7 1st gen.


if the motox had say a quad core 1.7 s4 like say HTC one, it wouldn't be any faster at the vast majority of apps and would just core more / use more power. quad core PCs hvae been out since the Q6600 days and we still cant find much use for the additional cores unless you are gaming heavily or encoding things. and no one encodes on their phone, and the games for the most part dont take advantage of more than 2 cores so why put it in there.

by the time someone who buys a moto x today, is done with a 2 year contract , quad cores still probably will be fairly underutilized on a phone.

the spec criticism of the moto x is unwarranted. it DOES have a dual core, but its on the latest krait. it does have a 720P amoled, but its non pentile (a S4 has a pentile 1080p). hell when the galaxy nexus came out it had a 720p pentile and people were whining about how it wasnt much better than the 480p non pentile amoled of the samsung GS2. and now the moto X has the non pentile amoled and somehow its "2 generations" behind. and the difference between even 720p and 1080p isnt nearly the different 720 pentile vs 480 non pentile is to most eyes.



its fairly up to date in a lot of things , in addition to having the 2 specialized cores which no other phones have. the camera isn't the best but it does have clearpixel and is competitive.

i'd say for the most part other than having 2 argueably not that useful extra integer cores, its hardware as a whole is competitive with everything else out there.

 

[soccerballtux]

/facepalm

Here's a hint: the Moto X uses an Adreno 320, the same as the HTC One.

cpus bro. not gpus.

 

[openwheel]

That's not the point. MotoX also uses the latest quadcore GPUs as other flagships, YES!

But the argument is that a dualcore is equally as competent in real World usage, if not better due to battery consumption.

 

[soccerballtux]

That's not the point. MotoX also uses the latest quadcore GPUs as other flagships, YES!

But the argument is that a dualcore is equally as competent in real World usage, if not better due to battery consumption.

and it's not future proof, just like the e8400 wasn't and made no sense to purchase when a quad could be had for the same price.
which is my argument and why I would go for the Nexus 4 or some other quad instead
2 years is a long time. this is mid range hardware and overpriced. Give me a quad and I'd consider it.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

That's not the point. MotoX also uses the latest quadcore GPUs as other flagships, YES!

But the argument is that a dualcore is equally as competent in real World usage, if not better due to battery consumption.

and it's not future proof, just like the e8400 wasn't and made no sense to purchase when a quad could be had for the same price.
which is my argument and why I would go for the Nexus 4 or some other quad instead
2 years is a long time. this is mid range hardware and overpriced. Give me a quad and I'd consider it.

Here's the thing. When quads first hit, the argument that many people threw around here was "better for multitasking, ends up saving power, etc etc." I heard that same argument for single core to dual core too.

The thing is no one ever tested these theories. Maybe its worth testing normal use patterns. Write an email, take a photo, post on Facebook. How much power does a single core versus a dual core versus a quad core use? How noticeable is the speed difference?

The issue I have with what people are throwing around here is that they're just excuses at the end of the day to justify the product that they like. When multi cores first came out people said it helps performance and battery. People say all sorts of things. Just like people said LTE was bad for battery, and then when Anandtech showed benchmarks saying otherwise, the "race to idle" argument got thrown around more. So which is it people? Is quad better? If Motorola didn't come out with a dual core phone, would all of you be talking about how "its too fast, we don't need quad, we need more battery?"

 

[Trombe]

this is the same crap we went through when PCs went quad. bunch of geeks saying they need the most number of cores even though its not really needed.


my computer at home is a core i3 2350m or something. dual core. works great for an actual PC. theres only so much threading that goes on in most apps and dual core is fine for a phone.

if anything we'd be better off with high clocked dual cores. i'd rather have a dual core snapdragon s4 at 1.7ghz like the moto x, than say a 1.3 ghz quad tegra3 like say my nexus 7 1st gen.


if the motox had say a quad core 1.7 s4 like say HTC one, it wouldn't be any faster at the vast majority of apps and would just core more / use more power. quad core PCs hvae been out since the Q6600 days and we still cant find much use for the additional cores unless you are gaming heavily or encoding things. and no one encodes on their phone, and the games for the most part dont take advantage of more than 2 cores so why put it in there.

by the time someone who buys a moto x today, is done with a 2 year contract , quad cores still probably will be fairly underutilized on a phone.

the spec criticism of the moto x is unwarranted. it DOES have a dual core, but its on the latest krait. it does have a 720P amoled, but its non pentile (a S4 has a pentile 1080p). hell when the galaxy nexus came out it had a 720p pentile and people were whining about how it wasnt much better than the 480p non pentile amoled of the samsung GS2. and now the moto X has the non pentile amoled and somehow its "2 generations" behind. and the difference between even 720p and 1080p isnt nearly the different 720 pentile vs 480 non pentile is to most eyes.



its fairly up to date in a lot of things , in addition to having the 2 specialized cores which no other phones have. the camera isn't the best but it does have clearpixel and is competitive.

i'd say for the most part other than having 2 argueably not that useful extra integer cores, its hardware as a whole is competitive with everything else out there.

Agreed for the most part. Although IMO this is a phone that should've hit retail in June. This late in the year it's kind of in a bad spot since S800 is already available in Asia and will be in America/Europe in September. I would've preferred a dual core variant of S800 by the end of the year (random food for thought: used for phablet version in the future?).

Remember that this is a mobile product and has to follow mobile product guidelines as far as manufacturing is concerned. Two cores in a quad that do nothing a huge amount of the time (and IIRC the Dalvik scheduler implementation just makes it even worse) is a waste of precious internal space and Moto opted to can them in favor of two custom dedicated cores that will be used far more often.

To top it all off, IMO trying to futureproof in the world of technology is basically never a good idea.

 

[openwheel]

Agree with above. Quad core is not faster in real world usage on a phone. Simple as that. I think Motorola made a great choice with different dedicated cores. The one area which is vital is GPU and they made a great choice there. This is not a compromise this is just intelligent and sensible design.

The days of more cores and higher clocks are long gone. We want smaller die and more efficient silicon's.

 

[thedosbox]

and it's not future proof, just like the e8400 wasn't and made no sense to purchase when a quad could be had for the same price.
which is my argument and why I would go for the Nexus 4 or some other quad instead
2 years is a long time. this is mid range hardware and overpriced. Give me a quad and I'd consider it.

As the others have pointed out, your PC biases are showing. And the idea of buying a Nexus 4 as "future proof" is laughable.

 

[dlock13]

So is there an ETA when AT&T loses exclusivity on MotoMaker or even when the Play Store should be getting it?

 

[cliftonite]

Here's the thing. When quads first hit, the argument that many people threw around here was "better for multitasking, ends up saving power, etc etc." I heard that same argument for single core to dual core too.

The thing is no one ever tested these theories. Maybe its worth testing normal use patterns. Write an email, take a photo, post on Facebook. How much power does a single core versus a dual core versus a quad core use? How noticeable is the speed difference?

The issue I have with what people are throwing around here is that they're just excuses at the end of the day to justify the product that they like. When multi cores first came out people said it helps performance and battery. People say all sorts of things. Just like people said LTE was bad for battery, and then when Anandtech showed benchmarks saying otherwise, the "race to idle" argument got thrown around more. So which is it people? Is quad better? If Motorola didn't come out with a dual core phone, would all of you be talking about how "its too fast, we don't need quad, we need more battery?"

When quadcores were coming out and manufacturers were putting in bigger batteries and more RAM you chastised them and said that they should optimize the software. Moto has done that and yet you are still complaining?

 

[hans007]

Just went to at&t to check it out. They had it next to an s4 and HTC one. It was tethered to some display playing some demo reel


But playing around with it it felt very fast at just opening web pages and swiping around. A lot less laggy than the RAZR m I brought which on paper should be close to as fast cpu wise. The HTC and s4 I've played with and unless you run benchmarks they all feel fast. Honestly sense kind of makes the HTC feel slower for some reason. Too many effects maybe

 

[Cobalt]

Ordered mine on the 17th. Still waiting to receive it and no I did not get the engraving on the back. Starting to get antsy..

 

[OBLAMA2009]

Just went to at&t to check it out. They had it next to an s4 and HTC one. It was tethered to some display playing some demo reel


But playing around with it it felt very fast at just opening web pages and swiping around. A lot less laggy than the RAZR m I brought which on paper should be close to as fast cpu wise. The HTC and s4 I've played with and unless you run benchmarks they all feel fast. Honestly sense kind of makes the HTC feel slower for some reason. Too many effects maybe

razr m is very slow, im not sure why. its is noticeably slower than the older razr.

 

[hans007]

razr m is very slow, im not sure why. its is noticeably slower than the older razr.

Yah mine feels like its getting slower and slower. I'm guessing its the lack of TRIM and only having 1gb ram

 

[OBLAMA2009]

i went and saw the new ultra and maxx and the moto x yesterday and the droid phones are definitely much cooler looking than the moto x and i think theyre cheaper. the mini is only 499 full retail, thats almost nexus pricing. weaved kevlar looks really cool

 

[VulgarDisplay]

i went and saw the new ultra and maxx and the moto x yesterday and the droid phones are definitely much cooler looking than the moto x and i think theyre cheaper. the mini is only 499 full retail, thats almost nexus pricing. weaved kevlar looks really cool

It looks cool, but the lacquer they put on the back off all the phones (excluding the maxx) is going to make the phone go down in history as one of the worst fingerprint magnets ever created.

To each their own, I prefer the minimalist front of the X, and the curving back. The Droids feel awful in your hand.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

When quadcores were coming out and manufacturers were putting in bigger batteries and more RAM you chastised them and said that they should optimize the software. Moto has done that and yet you are still complaining?

I'm not saying the phone is bad based on the fact that its dual core and 720p. I just have mixed feelings regarding Motorola given their past history with phones. I'd love for this phone to work out even without the most bleeding edge specs.

My bigger issue is that practically everyone here has been a champion of moving to dual core and then quad core saying its better. There were tons of justifications thrown around about how multi core ends up saving battery. When I asked people to explain how that line of thinking works, no one offered any plausible explanation.

So my question now is what's with the attempts to justify what Motorola is doing when you're so quick to judge other phones purely based on specs and to flame other manufacturers about low end specs?

 

[OBLAMA2009]

I'm not saying the phone is bad based on the fact that its dual core and 720p. I just have mixed feelings regarding Motorola given their past history with phones. I'd love for this phone to work out even without the most bleeding edge specs.

My bigger issue is that practically everyone here has been a champion of moving to dual core and then quad core saying its better. There were tons of justifications thrown around about how multi core ends up saving battery. When I asked people to explain how that line of thinking works, no one offered any plausible explanation.

So my question now is what's with the attempts to justify what Motorola is doing when you're so quick to judge other phones purely based on specs and to flame other manufacturers about low end specs?

sometimes less isnt more, mo' really is mo', as im mo' betta'. dats like sayin' woodya ratha have two millyun dollas or fo' millyun dollas, yeah two millya may be enuff but id still ratha have fo'...

 

[thedosbox]

My bigger issue is that practically everyone here has been a champion of moving to dual core and then quad core saying its better.

That's because most people are applying their PC biases to phones. As far as I know, there aren't any mobile apps that benefit from quad-core CPU's. However, there are plenty that benefit from a beefier GPU.

sometimes less isnt more, mo' really is mo', as im mo' betta'. dats like sayin' woodya ratha have two millyun dollas or fo' millyun dollas, yeah two millya may be enuff but id still ratha have fo'...

That's what AMD says about their octacore CPU's - and we know how that worked out.

 

[cliftonite]

I'm not saying the phone is bad based on the fact that its dual core and 720p. I just have mixed feelings regarding Motorola given their past history with phones. I'd love for this phone to work out even without the most bleeding edge specs.

My bigger issue is that practically everyone here has been a champion of moving to dual core and then quad core saying its better. There were tons of justifications thrown around about how multi core ends up saving battery. When I asked people to explain how that line of thinking works, no one offered any plausible explanation.

So my question now is what's with the attempts to justify what Motorola is doing when you're so quick to judge other phones purely based on specs and to flame other manufacturers about low end specs?

Why do you care? You got what you wanted. A manufacturer who ignored the specs and spent time optimizing their software. And yet you are still complaining...

 

[Sid59]

Anandtech's review is up - http://www.anandtech.com/show/7235/moto-x-review
GSMArena.com's review is up - http://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_moto_x-review-971.php

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

Not understanding why there is so much hype around this phone...

I don't see anything that differentiates it from the pack.

 

[openwheel]

people who fail to see, probably need glasses because this phone imho is a step in the right direction. It's sad when a company gets crticized for doing the right thing.

It offers things we want: optimization, battery life, top of the line GPU, RGB matrix Amoled, real software that we could use hands free (optimized with dedicated hardware too), and customization.

This phone elimiated things we don't want: bloated software, pentile matrix,

This phone eliminated things we don't need: quadcore and 1080p screen.

The only thing this phone is missing is a decent camera, but who really has a decent camera except Lumia 1020???

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

people who fail to see, probably need glasses because this phone imho is a step in the right direction. It's sad when a company gets crticized for doing the right thing.

It offers things we want: optimization, battery life, top of the line GPU, RGB matrix Amoled, real software that we could use hands free (optimized with dedicated hardware too), and customization.

This phone elimiated things we don't want: bloated software, pentile matrix,

This phone eliminated things we don't need: quadcore and 1080p screen.

The only thing this phone is missing is a decent camera, but who really has a decent camera except Lumia 1020???

Please show me the history of your posts championing using 2 cores and deriding HTC and Samsung for using 4 cores and 1080p screens.

Were you actually rooting for dual core and 720p phones or are you just now chanting that to excuse whatever Motorola released. If it had been a quad core phone and 1080p, you would've been just as happy.