I'm upgrading my broken HTC One M8 and I am looking for a new smartphone to buy. What new smartphone should I buy? I need your help guys.
I liked how the HTC One M8 had front speakers and they sounded great but now the Moto X Pure Edition's speakers sound way better than the M8's speakers. The Moto X Pure Edition speakers sound a lot louder and more clearer than the M8's speakers. I am considering buying the Moto X Pure Edition because of the great front speakers. However I do have some gripes with the Moto XPE that make me not want to buy the Moto XPE.
the Moto XPE is a big phone. The Moto XPE is even bigger than the HTC One M8. The M8 has a 5 inch screen and the Moto XPE has a 5.7 inch screen. I really don''t want a big phone because my hands are not the biggest to hold a 5.7 inch phone. the Moto XPE can not record 1080p 60fps video. Why is that? The HTC One M8 can record 1080p 60fps and the Moto XPE can not. I do not understand that. the Moto XPE does not have a Notification Led Light. The HTC One M8 has a notification led light, why does the Moto XPE not have a notification led light? Please someone explain that to me. Another gripe for me is that the Moto XPE is powered by the Snapdragon 808 processor. The M8 is powered by a Snapdragon 801 processor. The performance difference between the 808 and the 801 is not much. I have seen benchmarks online of the M8 and the Moto XPE and the Moto XPE scored 51401 on Antutu benchmark and the M8 scored 44284 on Antutu benchmark. The Moto XPE scored 1248 single core and 3361 multi core in Geekbench 3. The M8 scored 975 single core and 2976 multi core in Geekbench 3. The Adreno 418 is not that much more powerful than the Adreno 330 in gaming.
Is the Adreno 418 better than the Adreno 330? Is the Snapdragon 808 better than the Snapdragon 801? There really is not a huge performance difference between the HTC One M8 and the Moto XPE, or is there a performance difference? The Moto XPE suffers from thermal throttling when doing heavy tasks and benchmarks. I haven't seen the M8 thermal throttle on heavy tasks or benchmarks.
I have also looked at the Nexus 6P but that phone is even bigger and taller than the M8 and Moto XPE. The Nexus 6P also can't record 1080P 60fps video. I also heard the Nexus 6P video stabilization is really bad. So I am really not sure which phone to buy. Are there better phones out there than the Moto XPE and Nexus 6P? I'm saying are there better phones that don't have the same drawbacks as the Moto XPE and 6P have?
What are you doing with it that the processor is such a concern?
I'd advise getting something with a microSD card slot, so you're not limited by the onboard memory. I believe HTC is the only one that still has this on its higher end models. Removable batteries are even harder to come by, if you're looking at high end. Why Motorola did away with the notification light, who knows? That's a standard feature now. Bunch of idiots. I depend on that thing.
If you're gonna look at flagships, you're about 1-2 months early. Basically, wait. Afaik, SGS7 is gonna be released at MWC, HTC's M10/Perfume/whatever is MWC or March. Probably march though. And so on.
tl;dr Buy a cheap temporary phone (Moto G or something) and wait it out till the Snapdragon 820 devices start rolling out.. (/or Exynos 8890 á la Samsung)
Since getting a SD808 or SD810 phone right now is stupid. Living with those gets real boring, real fast. Even a buying SD801 or SD805 device makes more sense. Heck, SD800 is still a very capable SoC. I'm still rocking my One M7 with SD600 and will be for a while still.
Also, regarding your GPU question, the Adreno 418 is on par with Adreno 330. Adreno 418 is basically an 20nm version of Adreno 420 (28nm) which is basically an Adreno 330 (28nm) with different clockspeeds and extra bells and whistles (API's).
Edit: And regarding SD801 vs SD808 CPU power. Calculating it from DMIPS/Mhz (Dhrystone million instructions per second) and if utilizing ALL available cores: Best case scenario the SD808 is 0.89% faster, worst case scenario the SD808 is a little over 7% faster. SD801 uses Krait 400 cores with 3.39 DMIPS/Mhz. Four cores at max 2360Mhz. SD808 uses A57/A53 cores with 4.1-4.76/2.3 DMIPS/Mhz. Two cores at max 2000Mhz, four cores at max 1440Mhz.
Of course this is just one aspect of the performance. There are things the SD808 does faster than the SD801 where as there are some things that the SD801 will simply be able to do faster because it has four fast cores instead of two screaming fast power guzzling cores which will throttle back if you even look at them and four wimpy cores.
Looking at the current flagships, I'd seriously consider getting the M8 repaired rather than buying a new phone. There just isn't enough improvement.
Normally I buy a new phone every spring. I bought my M8 in 2014 and it was so good that I didn't replace it last year. Unless the M10 (or whatever new flagship HTC announces in March) is a massive leap forward, I probably won't be getting a new one this year either.
You think there is'nt enough improvement looking at current flagships? I don't agree with you. I need a serious upgrade from the M8 for the Camera. The M8's camera was awful. The M8 camera had the awful ultra pixel 4 megapixel nonsense. I want to upgrade to a better camera, Battery life was awful too on the M8 and some performance hiccups with the M8. The SD 801 is weaker than SD 808 and 810.
I'm curious what you pick because I also have a HTC One M8 Harmon/Kardon edition.
I love it, especially the sound. I use it as an MP3 player in my car. However, the thing that is a deal-breaker is the fact that the M8 has the worst camera in the history of smartphones.
The thing I really hate about my phone, even worse than the camera, is Sprint. I am ready to dump them, but I don't want a new phone. My Sprint bill is over $110 a month. I've been a loyal (Too lazy to switch) customer for 15 years and they won't make a deal even though I am poor and disabled. They offer customers that switch half price deals, but if you are loyal you get screwed.
Yeah, I heard the speakers are great, but HTC really dropped the ball on the camera. They used to have the best camera on the market with the original One. I don't know what happened.
No rewards for loyalty, huh? Have you tried threatening to switch carriers? I know this works for other services.
Every year?! Man, you're crazy! What do you do with all those old phones?
The camera is bad in daylight indeed. Good enough for the occasional quick photo, but not for proper photography. I could understand why people would consider that important enough to get a different phone.
After almost 2 years I'm still easily getting a day and a half of battery life with regular use, or well over 2 days if I only use if for some calls and text messages. Linus also reported having around 40% left at the end of the day and making it through the entire weekend on a single charge. If you had a lot less, you either had a bad battery or a rogue app that was using CPU cycles when it shouldn't be. Seeing as you mentioned performance hiccups, I suspect the latter.
When benchmarking, the 808 is indeed faster than the 801. However there's a difference between benchmarks and real life. I compared an LG G4 (which uses an 808) side-by-side with my own M8 and couldn't really tell the difference in terms of speed and responsiveness. The browser on the LG was slightly slower. Apps were opening just a little faster. Of course that's meaningless since both are running a different version of Android and a different skin. But I'm fairly confident that on a level playing field they'd still be trading blows
As for the 810, that puts out higher numbers in synthetic benchmarks but thermal throttles like crazy if you stress it for more than a minute. Below is a nice 801 vs 810 comparison, and proof that benchmarks are meaningless.
A quick search reveals that almost everyone who went from an M8 to an M9 noticed the same thing, the new phone with its Snapdragen 810 CPU was in fact slower than the old 801-powered one.
@HK-47 : I've always been able to sell them for more than half of the purchase price. It really isn't any more expensive than keeping a phone for 2 or 2.5 years and then having to sell it for peanuts because it's so outdated that nobody wants it anymore.
The moto x pure edition seems to fit all of those requirements. As an ex moto phone owner, the additional features added in are incredibly intuitive and useful. I simply didn't get one because I don't want a phone as large, but I do miss them.
