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Motorola essentially invented the cell phone, but it stumbled coming into the smartphone era. It has been making some great phones in the last few years, though, and the new Moto X Pure is the latest example of that. With a competitive price and bonny features, this phone might offer a good alternative to the market leading (and more expensive) Samsung Galaxy S6. Let's see how they compare.

Blueprint and brandish

The Galaxy S6 is sleek and very clean in blueprint, but it also looks like a lot of other phones — especially the iPhone vi. The Moto X is more distinctive, but still recognizable equally a Motorola phone. It has the same curved back and prominent forepart-facing speakers, whereas the GS6 has a completely flat back that doesn't fit as nicely in your hand. Information technology too has only one speaker on the bottom edge.

The Pure is also mildly h2o and dust-resistant with an IP52 rating. The GS6 doesn't accept whatsoever liquid ingress protection. I bet information technology would survive a quick dip, though, as it lacks a removable back panel for battery admission. The Moto Ten is also completely sealed, merely it has a microSD card slot on the SIM tray, which the GS6 lacks.

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Motorola offers a wide pick of plastic, woods, and leather back panels, along with tinted metal accents, and then you tin design a phone in the Moto Maker online tool that looks just the fashion you want. The Galaxy S6 is all metal and glass, but it simply comes in a few colors. These are both beautiful phones in their ain manner, but the Moto Maker customizations really set up the Moto 10 apart. This is definitely i of the primary selling points. If yous don't mind the glass construction, the Galaxy S6 is a much lighter phone. It's only 132g to the Moto X Pure'due south 179g.

The Moto Ten is much heavier because it'due south just a bigger telephone. The brandish is 5.seven-inches on the Pure, a substantial increase compared to concluding year's Moto Ten. The Milky way S6 is a much more than modest 5.ane-inches, but the size isn't the only matter that sets them apart. Samsung uses Super AMOLED panels, and this one is fantastic. The GS6 has a 2560×1600 resolution AMOLED with very high brightness, perfect viewing angles, and vibrant, notwithstanding authentic colors. The GS6 and Note 5 take the all-time displays you can get on a smartphone.

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I don't think anyone was expecting the Moto X Pure to match the Samsung Milky way S6 in the display department, merely the company did something odd this year. The last few Motorola flagships accept had AMOLED panels, but this year they switched to 1440p LCDs. This might be a cost-saving measure out, only the display still looks good, though not every bit good as the GS6 plainly. The effulgence is good enough for use outdoors and the viewing angles are above average. It reminds me very much of the LG G4'due south LCD, but a bit brighter and not curved. The Moto X'southward screen is bigger than the GS6, so the pixel density is lower, merely both are crisp enough that you'll never discover whatsoever divergence.

Part of the Moto 10'south screen real estate is eaten up by the on-screen navigation buttons. I prefer this setup personally, but there are many who swear by the physical buttons y'all get on the Milky way S6. At that place'due south likewise a handy fingerprint scanner in the GS6'southward home button. The Moto X doesn't have one of those.

Internals and battery life

The Moto X and Galaxy S6 are both powerful phones, just when information technology comes to pure horsepower, the GS6 runs away with it. This device has an octa-core Samsung Exynos 7420 organization-on-a-chip (SoC) with iv (Niggling) Cortex-A53 cores and four (big) Cortex-A57 in a big.Lilliputian configuration. Unlike the similarly specced Snapdragon 810, this chip manages eight cores well without aggressive thermal throttling. Motorola went with a more than modest SoC, the Snapdragon 808. This is a hexa-core chip with four Cortex-A53 cores and 2 Cortex-A57 in a big.Little configuration. The 2 faster cores produce less oestrus, so the chip doesn't have to throttle like the more powerful 810.

In daily use, the difference in SoC ability is negligible, although the GPU on the Exynos scrap is faster than the one on the 808. Nevertheless, the Snapdragon 808 is less ability-hungry than the Exynos. Both phones also have NFC chips. It used to be that you didn't need to specify that, just nosotros live in interesting times (looking at you, OnePlus).

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The GS6 and the Moto 10 Pure both have 3GB of RAM, which is plenty to keep apps running in the background. The Motorola device has typical RAM usage for an Android device, just Samsung has insisted on tuning the organization a bit differently. The GS6 volition but keep a few apps in memory, then it ends the groundwork process. Information technology'south not the sort of thing everyone volition notice, but if you're hopping quickly betwixt a number of apps, you might notice they need to reload too oftentimes. The Moto X doesn't do that.

As mentioned to a higher place, both phones have sealed-in batteries, just the Motorola's is a bit Larger at 3000mAh. The Milky way S6 is only 2550mAh, but the screen is more efficient to make upwardly for it. The Moto X will probably get slightly improve battery life nether mixed use, but screen time will exist roughly the aforementioned. This is assuming the GS6 doesn't have some sort of software glitch that screws upwardly the bombardment life, which owners seem to complain about often. Both phones back up quick charging, which can completely fill a drained battery in around an hr, but only the GS6 has wireless charging built-in.

Cameras

Motorola'due south previous Android phones have had bad cameras. They might have been okay in some circumstances, like vivid outdoor low-cal, but The Moto Ten had a lot of room for improvement. Luckily, the Pure has a vastly improved 21MP epitome sensor with an f2.0 discontinuity. It doesn't have optical paradigm stabilization (OIS), just the software stabilization is surprisingly good. A bit of jostling won't screw upwards a photograph taken in medium or bright light.

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