Droid X vs Samsung Galaxy S

vud911 · Aug 22, 2010

bosox2k1 said:
You have seen the article stating Quadrant is essentially useless as a benchmark now? It's fun to get high numbers, but that's about it. Search Droid-Life or something.
In the real world my phone is essentially instantaneous in everything---and I know you can't improve upon that. Why are you trolling here?

No, I read articles where they stated Hummingbird processor is the faster one out of the two. Better graphical power (somehow I bet that will help with Flash in Froyo...but that's useless I guess :rolleyes:

).

Many of the problems you listed for the Samsung can be fixed -- GPS, for example via xda method. An official patch is also coming out in September along with Froyo.

Like I said, Droid X is an amazing phone. It does indeed perform many of the things well. It have many ups, few downs. But raw power wise, it isn't the stronger one out of the two, which is my point. (not with the same OS, anyway. We'll see in Froyo) Correcting your misinformed 'facts' isn't trolling. And I think I can pitch in a thread titled Samsung Galaxy S in it with my 2 cents.

soapinmouth · Aug 22, 2010

krichek said:
As a counter, I've owned both as well and went with the Vibrant..

I'm not really sure what "better call quality" means, unless it was an issue with AT&T. For me the Vibrant has been better for calls simply because I don't have to say "What? I missed that..." Anytime I was talking on the phone in a less than quite enviroment. I'd say the X's volume issue is just as significant a problem as the Galaxies GPS issue. Both are supposed to be fixed around the same time and seem to affect users in varying degrees.

I had an original Droid before the X or the Vibrant, I was used to capacitive buttons. Having used both now, I can honestly say I don't prefer one over the other so long as whatever it is actually works, which they seem to do on both.

I didn't miss the size as much as I thought I would, as a bonus the Vibrant is more one hand friendly (important to me), and I felt the improvement in the screens contrast, color saturation and bright sun performance made me miss it even less. I do wish both had an increase in resolution tho.

The galaxies by the way have both composite out which mirrors the display on the phone as well as HDMI out via a special USB cable. I do wish there was a dedicated camera button on the Galaxies, as well as a flash as it makes a great flashlight but in practice sucks at what it was actually intended for.

Finally, My wife and I both have Vibrant's and neither of us have had an issue when using the GPS. We have both used it in the car as well as with MyTracks while biking. As for whether it will come or will fix the problem, I've seen youtube videos of a fix for the Captivate that is in testing that certainly seems to fix the issue. Not sure why they would put out a press release saying a fix was coming and clearly be working on a fix if they have no intention of ever releasing it.

Better by the way is very subjective, I think Samsung and Motorola both are very good companies in general that have had faults in their past. I'm willing to wait and see which is what I would have to do with either phone.

Overall, I've been happier with the Vibrant but enjoyed the X as well. Glad you found the right fit for you as well.

Speaker volume is much better on the X now with Froyo

vud911 said:
No, I read articles where they stated Hummingbird processor is the faster one out of the two. Better graphical power (somehow I bet that will help with Flash in Froyo...but that's useless I guess).

Many of the problems you listed for the Samsung can be fixed -- GPS, for example via xda method. An official patch is also coming out in September along with Froyo.

Like I said, Droid X is an amazing phone. It does indeed perform many of the things well. It have many ups, few downs. But raw power wise, it isn't the stronger one out of the two, which is my point. (not with the same OS, anyway. We'll see in Froyo) Correcting your misinformed 'facts' isn't trolling. And I think I can pitch in a thread titled Samsung Galaxy S in it with my 2 cents.

Hmm well the onboard Gpu on the hummingbird is way beyond the one in the x, but I wouldn't say the actual cpu is faster. Either way though going to wait and see if I want it or not when it comes out, if I do I'll just sell my X and buy a facinate.

vud911 · Aug 22, 2010

There are many benefits of having an onboard GPU.

YouTube - Snapdragon vs. Hummingbird vs. OMAP

Check it out, pretty nice comparison using real life scenerio. Droid X won a few times. So did Captivate. It does show how smoothly the Captivate scrolls and zooms in Google Earth due to its dedicated GPU. So, nope. You'll see the effect of an onboard GPU in areas outside of gaming (I don't even play games on my phone, touchscreen suck -- try playing an emulator on a touchscreen, haha).

And honestly, I foresee future phones to follow the Samsung route and include their own onboard GPUs to their phones. Might take a few years though.

vud911 · Aug 22, 2010

soapinmouth said:
Hmm well the onboard Gpu on the hummingbird is way beyond the one in the x, but I wouldn't say the actual cpu is faster. Either way though going to wait and see if I want it or not when it comes out, if I do I'll just sell my X and buy a facinate.

Yea, I think I went overboard with that too. They might be hand-in-hand in terms of processing power.

I think you should wait for Froyo to come out next month for the Fascinate and see the benchmark for it before you decide. Why switch from the Droid X when performance is similar, though I'm still betting the onboard GPU will help with Flash for sure. Still, will be interesting to see either way.

soapinmouth · Aug 22, 2010

vud911 said:
There are many benefits of having an onboard GPU.

YouTube - Snapdragon vs. Hummingbird vs. OMAP

Check it out, pretty nice comparison using real life scenerio. Droid X won a few times. So did Captivate. It does show how smoothly the Captivate scrolls and zooms in Google Earth due to its dedicated GPU. So, nope. You'll see the effect of an onboard GPU in areas outside of gaming (I don't even play games on my phone, touchscreen suck -- try playing an emulator on a touchscreen, haha).

And honestly, I foresee future phones to follow the Samsung route and include their own onboard GPUs to their phones. Might take a few years though.

Don't mean to try to be mean but the x does have a gpu. They have very similar too bothsame chip just the sammy phone has a newer version I think the x has a 535 or 530 don't remember of the top of my head and the galaxy x has A 540 small incriment but its actually a huge jump in power.

sund0wn · Aug 22, 2010

as someone who has used both phones, i would call it very close. in all of these comparisons, we are talking about fractions of a second in dfference, and on the screens, there isnt a whole lot of difference in color saturation. i mean, side by side there is a difference, but if you used one for a day, and another the next, you probably wouldnt notice much difference. i would really call it a toss-up. i think it really comes down to which design you like the most, and which UI you feel the most comfortable with.
i think it's hardly worth getting worked up over the difference. it's like people who argue the difference between nvidia and ati GPUs. there may be some difference in benchmarks, but when it comes down to it, you really wont notice much of a difference.

soapinmouth · Aug 22, 2010

As far as that video goes though, from what I can tell the x is the only one with a live wallpaper which is constantly ruining In the background might have gave it a bit of a handicap :/

TheAlmightyDrew · Aug 22, 2010

vud911 said:
There are many benefits of having an onboard GPU.

YouTube - Snapdragon vs. Hummingbird vs. OMAP

Check it out, pretty nice comparison using real life scenerio. Droid X won a few times. So did Captivate. It does show how smoothly the Captivate scrolls and zooms in Google Earth due to its dedicated GPU. So, nope. You'll see the effect of an onboard GPU in areas outside of gaming (I don't even play games on my phone, touchscreen suck -- try playing an emulator on a touchscreen, haha).

And honestly, I foresee future phones to follow the Samsung route and include their own onboard GPUs to their phones. Might take a few years though.

You have to keep in mind that that Youtube video is a month old. A LOT has happened with the Galaxy S in the past month.

To give you an idea, the Quadrant benchmark score of the factory Samsung firmware is about 850. The Galaxy S in that video at that time would have been on the factory firmware since the lag is noticeable. Also bare in mind that performance jumps the moment you disable the garbage iPhone-like Touchwiz interface.

Now, if you upgrade the firmware to the latest official one, disable Touchwiz, and run the 1-button lag fix program, you'll get Quadrant scores of 2250. Nearly 3 times the performance!! And it'll only go up once Froyo's officially released.

Here is a screenshot a friend of mine took running the leaked JM5 firmware and the CSC from JM2. No overclocking or anything, although he changed the system/data partition to ext2, which did this:

esn · Aug 22, 2010

I played with the Tmobile version and by far the Droid X IMO is a better device all around. I don't need a super high def screen its just a cell phone not a television if I want to watch a movie I will do it on my home television. The UI on the galaxy is slow and choppy and no camera flash . I think the vzw model may do better but I don't think it will outsell the Dinc or X.

you2 · Aug 22, 2010

The problem with things like this is that the comparison is not fair. I.e, all the devices support ext2; so they should all be using ext2 when making a comparison (I'm not concern about the fairness of custom roms for droid x because it can't take them; but most of the speed up is due to ext2)

TheAlmightyDrew said:
You have to keep in mind that that Youtube video is a month old. A LOT has happened with the Galaxy S in the past month.

To give you an idea, the Quadrant benchmark score of the factory Samsung firmware is about 850. The Galaxy S in that video at that time would have been on the factory firmware since the lag is noticeable. Also bare in mind that performance jumps the moment you disable the garbage iPhone-like Touchwiz interface.

Now, if you upgrade the firmware to the latest official one, disable Touchwiz, and run the 1-button lag fix program, you'll get Quadrant scores of 2250. Nearly 3 times the performance!! And it'll only go up once Froyo's officially released.

Here is a screenshot a friend of mine took running the leaked JM5 firmware and the CSC from JM2. No overclocking or anything, although he changed the system/data partition to ext2, which did this:

sund0wn · Aug 22, 2010

TheAlmightyDrew said:
to add on to what you2 was saying, 3 times the quadrant score doesnt mean 3 times the performance. there is a little crack that made my x go from 1400 scores to 2200s, with no noticeable difference. those samsungs put up monster I/O numbers with a tweak, but real world difference is hardly noticable. take it from someone who knows, if you take one phone for one day, and another the next, the main difference you will notice is the UI, not the performance.
there is no reason to regret buying one or the other. they are both excellent phones with their own merits.

vud911 · Aug 22, 2010

you2 said:
The problem with things like this is that the comparison is not fair. I.e, all the devices support ext2; so they should all be using ext2 when making a comparison (I'm not concern about the fairness of custom roms for droid x because it can't take them; but most of the speed up is due to ext2)

Droid X, Captivate Overclocked | AndroidGuys

I'm pretty certain there is a stall issue bug in Samsung Galaxy. I wouldn't say all is attributed to ext2. From the article above, using ext2 and overclocking to 1.2ghz, his/her Samsung Galaxy yield a whooping score of over 2700. Keep in mind this is not Froyo. It'll only go up with that release.

And honestly, I don't see how Droid X will be able to beat Samsung Galaxy raw power wise.

Fix Samsung Galaxy S Stalling Issue

Check the Quadrant Professional benchmarks...
Hummingbird won in the processor column by a very slight margin.

The only thing holding it down is the I/O problem, which is fixable. Droid X won in the memory catagory, but in the 2D/3D, Samsung Galaxy won by a landslide. So I/O issue aside (because this can be fixed to astronomical values), CPU/graphical power goes to Samsung...so it'll be hard to see how Droid X will win regardless...its like 2 vs 1.

there is no reason to regret buying one or the other. they are both excellent phones with their own merits.

This I agree with. While I do think the extra power in the Samsung GalaxyGPU does affect everyday usage (check the Youtube video, specifically to the Google Earth zooming comparison), I think they're both super phones.

Really comes down to preference, anyway due to screensize. And really, I can see why people will pick Droid X over Samsung. Samsung doesn't have a history of supporting their phones (hell, I was skeptical to make the jump when I read Beholder owners' horrific stories), while Motorola gave Froyo to original Droid. Now that's saying something! If I had money to put, I'll wager it on Motorola to get Gingerbread while I am praying (haha) Galaxy will get it.

krichek · Aug 22, 2010

soapinmouth said:
Speaker volume is much better on the X now with Froyo

Great to hear. I have excellent hearing and it was annoying whenever I was in a loud enviroment having to really concentrate on hearing what someone was trying to say on the other end.

Hmm well the onboard Gpu on the hummingbird is way beyond the one in the x, but I wouldn't say the actual cpu is faster. Either way though going to wait and see if I want it or not when it comes out, if I do I'll just sell my X and buy a facinate.

If you check out the results on the versions of Quadrant that you have to pay for, the results of each individual test are shown. The results do show the Samsung cpu slightly ahead of the X's cpu

esn said:
I played with the Tmobile version and by far the Droid X IMO is a better device all around. I don't need a super high def screen its just a cell phone not a television if I want to watch a movie I will do it on my home television. The UI on the galaxy is slow and choppy and no camera flash . I think the vzw model may do better but I don't think it will outsell the Dinc or X.

Best for you, which is great. Personally I found the flash on the X to make a great flashlight, but did nothing to increase picture quality. While the X may sell more than Fascinate there is no way it will sell more than the Galaxy family of devices as a whole. I think they've sold more than 800,000 just in Korea alone.

you2 said:
The problem with things like this is that the comparison is not fair. I.e, all the devices support ext2; so they should all be using ext2 when making a comparison (I'm not concern about the fairness of custom roms for droid x because it can't take them; but most of the speed up is due to ext2)

I think it is a very fair comparison especially when you consider the Galaxy class devices are hindered with Samsung's proprietary rfs file system. Most of the speedup is not so much from using ext2/3/4 it's from NOT using Samsung's version of rfs.

jroc · Aug 23, 2010

So...its stock vs. rooted then......cuz as of right now that fix can only be applied if u rooted. That still seems fair? I dont know about other ppl, but thats why I dont try to compare a stock phone vs. a rooted one.

Stock vs. stock....I think the X can hold its own against other phones.

vud911 · Aug 23, 2010

jroc said:
So...its stock vs. rooted then......cuz as of right now that fix can only be applied if u rooted. That still seems fair? I dont know about other ppl, but thats why I dont try to compare a stock phone vs. a rooted one.

Stock vs. stock....I think the X can hold its own against other phones.

1) We are not comparing different OS here. I scored a 2313 using the stock Touchwiz, rooted of course to apply the fix. This is the stock Touchwiz vs Motorola Blur interface.
2) Droid X been rooted but you still won't see that kind of increase. See below for explanation because, as mentioned before by the other guy, most of the speed gain is from not using the Samsung shitty close source RFS filesystem, not because of ext2.
3) I/O score aside, which is affected by the stall problem and fully fixable, the Samsung Galaxy series processor beat out the Droid X slightly , and the GPU pretty much owns the Droid X many ways. Droid X won in the memory category slightly ahead. So that's pretty much 2vs1, not even considering the I/O score.

xda-developers - View Single Post - [UTIL] One Click Lag Fix 2.0

Here's the quote from the person who wrote the workaround:

Q: Can this mod work on other Android devices? Would we see a performance boost on them as well? If not why is it limited to the Galaxy S?
A: SGS has very very good hardware, but it has some parts of it's hardware poorly implemented. The filesystem that samsung chose to use is custom-built using FAT32 as a base, RFS. It has a lot of the problems that FAT32 has, and should have been left back in the 90s, or even the 80s.

One of the big issues with it is how it handles multiple requests - it blocks. It blocks everything. When your mail app wants to read the mail you just tried to view, but your twitter app is busy writing a new tweat it just received, your mail app is forced to wait.

This is bad, but it could be worse! And it is... your twitter app didn't just get one tweat, it got 50 tweaks. It is busy writing the tweats one by one to the filesystem. This would be fine, since all modern filesystems will buffer writes, so instead of writing each one at a time, they will batch them together and write it as a big chunk. Uh oh - RFS does no buffering at all! After each write, it will also write an update to the grafted-on journal system. Guess what happened to your mail you were trying to view while all this happened? It 'lagged' and you got a black screen for half a second, before the mail popped into view.

Luckily the hardware on the device is so good that you usually don't even notice the problem until you have a lot of apps running, all writing their updates when you unlock the phone.

This is mostly speculation based on experiments done on RFS -- RFS is closed source, and we have no idea if the problems are just badly set settings (such as a block size that is too small), coding bugs in the implementation, or if RFS is just really that badly designed.

This fix just grafts a buffer on top of the RFS filesystem, using a very very simple and fast filesystem, EXT2. It fixes most of the issues by writing to RFS as seldom as possible.

So no, this fix won't fix other devices, since they're already running quite close to maximum speed. The SGS at stock is running nowhere near maximum speed, and this lag fix takes it a bit closer. You could probably speed up other devices by tweaking the filesystem settings to give them a big buffer or similar, but it isn't really needed. (I haven't actually tried to put an EXT2 onto any other Android phone, as I don't have any other Android phone, so this is just speculation.)

sund0wn · Aug 23, 2010

there is one important difference between the fascinate and the droid x.... you can get a droid x!
i suppose you could leave verizon to get another galaxy s, but after all, isnt the network the most important part of the phone? and, we all know big red is miles above the rest in overall national coverage.

vud911 · Aug 23, 2010

sund0wn said:
there is one important difference between the fascinate and the droid x.... you can get a droid x!
i suppose you could leave verizon to get another galaxy s, but after all, isnt the network the most important part of the phone? and, we all know big red is miles above the rest in overall national coverage.

Totally agree.

Verizon is miles ahead of others. Speaking as a T-Mobile customer. I saw my co-worker who was speaking in the elevator with his HTC Incredible :eek:

.

sund0wn · Aug 23, 2010

vud911 said:
Totally agree. Verizon is miles ahead of others. Speaking as a T-Mobile customer. I saw my co-worker who was speaking in the elevator with his HTC Incredible .

although, i would love some t-mobile or sprint prices!

my buddy has the galaxy s on the big T, and i'm pretty jealous of the free copy of avatar!

i wish the fascinate would have that!

krichek · Aug 23, 2010

sund0wn said:
there is one important difference between the fascinate and the droid x.... you can get a droid x!
i suppose you could leave verizon to get another galaxy s, but after all, isnt the network the most important part of the phone? and, we all know big red is miles above the rest in overall national coverage.

I guess it comes down to location, location, location.. Where I live the big 4 are pretty equal in terms of coverage. I do occasionally drop down to edge speeds in a few places that the X would get 3g. But I think that is negated by the fact that when I do have 3g it's about 3-6x faster than the X's.

I don't mind saving about $80 a month for the same plan either!

As much as I hated Sprint's customer service I think the better device all around could have been the Epic 4g. It's to bad they gimped it with only 1GB of internal storage.

jree · Aug 23, 2010

esn said:
I played with the Tmobile version and by far the Droid X IMO is a better device all around. I don't need a super high def screen its just a cell phone not a television if I want to watch a movie I will do it on my home television. The UI on the galaxy is slow and choppy and no camera flash . I think the vzw model may do better but I don't think it will outsell the Dinc or X.

This theory of it being "just a phone" could also be applied to the camera. If I want to take a memorable picture I can use my digital camera. I watch movies all the time on my phone and think that the screen is exactly what I need. I watched 2 movies when I was in the waiting room for jury duty and it came in handy. Also, my screen doesn't get washed out when in direct sunlight.

I can honestly say when I was phone shopping, the X and Evo were just way to big for my pocket and I don't wear those horrible skinny jeans. Even the Vibrant almost feels too big in my pocket. So thats gotta be something that influences your decision.

Touchwiz wasn't that bad and I could have lived with it but I am now obsessed with LauncherPro which takes away any lag that was there in the first place. Browser speed is amazing and gameplay is ridiculous.

As far as durability goes, I have a 4 month old puppy that tried to use my phone as a chew toy(I started a thread somewhere) and absolutley nothing happened except maybe the bezel has a few teeth marks. But the screen and the back cover came away unscathed and she was chewing on it for a decent amount of time. After she shredded my case to pieces my phone was naked for atleast 2 weeks(I just got a case 2 days ago) and I must have dropped it cause the phone itself is incredibly too smooth which I hate about it. It even fell face down when I was standing up outta chair and forgot that it was on my lap so durability isn't an issue.

Either way you cut, both phones are extremely similar to each other in performance and its great that Android has advanced so far that we are no longer comparing them to the iphone as a benchmark. We have far surpassed them and have found real competition within our own community. I guess you could say that this is one time that civil war is actually a good thing.

vud911 · Aug 23, 2010

Pretty much in agree with jree. If it is "just a cellphone", then get a dumb phone and save yourself a few hundred dollars, without data plan. Any dumb phone will do that trick...or are you buying it for the bells and whistle?

Hell, isn't a Droid X overkill than the Samsung Galaxy S for your purpose since the screen is bigger, therefore even more suitable for multimedia purpose? You just want to make phone calls, right?

kevinlovesrice · Aug 25, 2010

dude..... fascinate has 16GB onboard.....

hahaha what · Aug 25, 2010

lol wtf who would want this samsung knockoff garbage if i wanted a phone that looks like an iphone i would have just gotten an iphone

SFWB · Aug 25, 2010

kevinlovesrice said:
dude..... fascinate has 16GB onboard.....

No... The Galaxy S has 16gb. The Fascinate will only have 2gb for some reason. Check out the reviews/specs.

Motorola Droid X vs. Samsung Fascinate (Galaxy S)

deadinside · Aug 25, 2010

If I wanted a galaxy, I would have stuck with T-Mo. After their last issue with their Behold 2, I would not touch another samsung phone again.

They pushed a 1.6 update stating no more updates and the 1.6 update made my phone a POS. Even the retention department tried to offer me the phone at $149 when I was cancelling, I still turned it down to place a lot more money on the droid and deposit for VZW.

Edit: I noticed how you said it already has root. That statement is wrong.

Droid X vs Samsung Galaxy S

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