Which smartphone is the better purchase? We compare the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and the Motorola Moto X to see which is worth to buy.
For the design and display, the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 has a unique design and the faux leather on the back with fake stitches on the edges looked amazing. On the top left side users will see the volume buttons, and they can reach them easily because they’re placed exactly under our left thumb. It has a 5.7inches Super AMOLED display that supports a resolution of 1920x1080pixels and 386ppi. It measures 151.2×79.2×8.3 mm and it’s actually taller than its predecessor, which has a display of 5.9 inches. The drawback of its display is that, despite of the fact that it can be used for watching movies or writing notes, the Super AMOLED technology doesn’t offer the best viewing experienced under direct sunlight.
The Motorola Moto X has a shell created from a rubberized, soft-touch plastic material and has the Motorola logo under the camera. Its dimensions are 129.3×65.3×10.4 mm and it weighs 130 grams. It also allows users to customize the rear shell, power and volume buttons and these customization combinations won’t affect the final price.
The smartphone has a 4.7 inches AMOLED display with 720x1280pixels and 312ppi and it’s protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 3.
In terms of hardware and OS, the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is powered by either by a quad core 2.3GHz Krait 400, in combination with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset and Adreno 330 GPU, or by a quad core 1.9GHz Cortex A17 & quad core 1.3GHz Cortex A7 with Exynos 5 Octa 5420 chipset and Mali-T628 MP6 GPU. Its internal memory is available in three variants: 16 and 32GB, expendable up to 64GB + a 64GB option and the RAM capacity is 3GB. It comes loaded with Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) and it can be upgraded into the 4.4.2 (KitKat), and has the TouchWiz interface on top of it, with many controls similar to those on the Galaxy S4. Users can turn on Multi Window, Smart Stay, Reading Mode, but if you’re not fond of a exaggerated colorful user experience, then you should stick with Jelly Bean.
The Motorola Moto X is powered by a dual core 1.7GHz Krait processor, based on a Qualcomm MSM8960Pro Snapdragon chipset and it uses an Adreno 320 GPU, but many consider this combination inferior, compared to other smartphones. The internal memory is fixed at 16/32/64 GB, the RAM capacity is 2GB and the operating system is Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean), which is upgradable to v4.4.4 (KitKat). The Moto X has a unique feature called Active Display, but it’s not perfect because to check the recent notifications or the weather, users have to press the power button all the time, to “wake up” the display. There are other features called Touchless Control with which you can trigger some actions when saying “OK Google Now”, and Motorola Assist, which controls your device when sleeping or driving and it puts it to silence.
For battery and camera specs, the Samsung Galaxy Note 3's battery is user replaceable, Li-Ion with a capacity of 3200mAh, which withstands up to 21 hours when talking on 3G. The Motorola Moto G on the other hands, has a Li-Ion 2200mAh battery, also user replaceable and it lasts only 13 hours when talking on 3G.
The Samsung device has a 13MP camera on the rear panel shoots 4K UHD videos and the maximum supported resolution is 3,840×2,160pixels. The disadvantage is that users are able to play the video back in this resolution on the Note 3 and users also can’t take pictures while recording videos in this mode. Luckily, there are plenty features that owners can use to obtain accurate pictures. Plus, there’s a 2MP camera on the front for video calling.
The Motorola Moto X has a 10MP ClearPixel camera on the back.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 32GB 4G variant cost $589, while the Motorola Moto X 16GB variant cost $390.
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