Moto X vs HTC One: 4.7-inch Android 4.2.2 showdown

Moto X vs HTC One: 4.7-inch Android 4.2.2 showdown

We can all go ahead and stop calling the Moto X a mid-range phone now.

Everyone is guilty of it, myself included. You look at that specs sheet and the first thing you think is “how could this possibly cost as much on a new contract as something like the Galaxy S4 or the HTC One?” because the tech community has been trained to care about specs. As far as we’ve been told, the quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor is a better processor than the previous generation Snapdragon S4 Pro. We see these names and they are supposed to mean something.

While we’re not quite ready to give a full review on the Moto X, we have taken some time to compare the camera and general performance side by side with the HTC One. The truth is there’s nothing mid-range about the Moto X, and it is a fierce competitor against the HTC One (as well as the Galaxy S4).

The HTC One and Moto X are both 4.7-inch Android phones running version 4.2.2 with curved backs to better fit in the hand. The curve on the Moto X is a little more noticeable than on the HTC One, and as a result is a little more difficult to use when its on flat surface.

The Moto X is noticeably smaller than the One due to the lack of HTC’s BoomSound speakers and IR sensor on the top of the phone. As a result, the Moto X fits much better in my hand, but has its speaker on the back of the phone near the camera instead of the front. Meanwhile, HTC’s volume rocker and power button sit nice and flush with the aluminum unibody casing, while the Moto X button stick out a bit against the seam that separates the glass front and polycarbonate back.

Moto X
Display

The most important part of any phone is the part that lets you actually use it. This is an area that HTC has excelled in for a while now, and is an area in which the Motorola is lacking. In a side-by-side comparison, you can absolutely see the screen superiority of the HTC One. The 1080p display is crisp and clear, while the same image on the Moto X can look slightly fuzzy… if you look hard. You won’t notice the difference when you are playing games, but you’ll absolutely notice it when reading text.

If you’re not terribly picky about 720p vs 1080p, you have to choose between color accuracy on these two screens. HTC’s display shows color significantly cooler than the Moto X. The warm display on the X is great for looking at color, but on a flat white background the screen can offer a yellow twinge that can be bothersome to some users. On the other hand, the overly blue tint on the HTC One can be irritating in low light situations, so what you’re really deciding is which end of the color correction scale you prefer to be on since neither phone really does a good enough job of hitting the middle.

Performance

It’s a no-brainer, right? There’s no way that S4 Pro can outshine the Snapdragon 600. Only, that’s not exactly true. Both phones are incredibly snappy, and it’s not easy to compare glide and scroll performance because HTC Sense and vanilla Android deploy different movement principles to scrolling and bouncing, but in no way do either phone have problems. The animations on the Moto X are noticeably faster when entering and exiting menus, but when you are using these two phones side by side you’ll be unable to tell which  Android 4.2.2 phone is faster.

Complex tasks are where it is at, and there’s no greater real world test of raw performance on a Qualcomm phone than their own made for Snapdragon game. Reign of Amira is great for testing Snapdragon systems against one another because Qualcomm made this game in house with the specific intention of showing off how great their systems are for gaming. When running these two phones side by side, the Moto X is noticeably faster than the HTC One. In our video demonstration, you can see that the Moto X is a full second faster in loading the game, despite being a technically lesser processor.

Games aren’t the only hardware intensive thing you can do on an Android phone, but it is by far the most common. The Moto X gets a slight performance bump here because it only has to draw against a 720p display instead of a 1080p display, which helps explain why the animations and navigation feels just slightly faster sometimes. If you were to do something like transcode a video and share it via HDMI to a television, it is likely that the quad core processor on the HTC One would handle that better.