Motorola Droid Turbo vs iPhone 6 Specs Battle

Motorola Droid Turbo vs iPhone 6 Specs Battle

This year the smartphone market has been dominated by Phablets. LG launched the 5.5-inch G3 earlier this year and in the second half we have seen a number of impressive phablets being launched like the Apple iPhone 6 Plus, Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Samsung Galaxy Note Edge, Google Nexus 6 and a few others. But what about those of you who do not like the size of phablets and want something more compact but would still want to have the latest and greatest hardware? Well you have two good options in the Apple iPhone 6 and the Motorola Droid Turbo. These two smartphones are the most powerful devices outside of the bigger phablets mentioned above.

The Apple iPhone 6 marks the first time that Apple has decided that 4-inch is indeed small and it needs to offer a bigger screen in order to compete with Android rivals. Even though the device hasn’t been able to impress critics as much as Apple would have hoped, sales of the iPhone 6 have actually been better than Apple’s expectations. Even though the iPhone 6 would have been in the market for only around three months by the end of calendar year, it is expected to be the largest selling smartphone of the year by quite a wide margin.

Motorola Droid Turbo can be considered a comeback device for the Droid brand. Last year’s Droid models weren’t really impressive in many ways and weren’t true blue flagships like the iconic Droid Razr or the original Motorola Droid. Not only does the Droid Turbo share the same design legacy as the earlier Droids, but it is also a benchmark hardware wise among smartphones with a display size below 5.5 inches.

As with our earlier Versus articles, we’re going to compare the two handsets across 10 categories. A win in a category gets a smartphone 1 point. The one that wins most rounds in our comparison would be the winner.

Display

The display is one of the most key components of a smartphone and with crazy resolution race in the past year or two, we have been spoiled by high-quality displays with super high pixel density. On a 2014 flagship device, nothing less than a top grade display will do.

Apple has strangely decided that it doesn’t need to be a part of the resolution race and hasn’t upgraded the resolution significantly from the iPhone 5s. The iPhone 6 has a 4.7-inch display with a resolution of 750 x 1334. That gives it a pixel density of 326PPI, identical to the pixel density on the iPhone 5s. So even though you are getting a bigger display in comparison to last year’s 5s, it is no sharper. Instead of concentrating on higher resolution, Apple has tried to improve the visual qualities of the display and has bumped up the contrast ratio from 800:1 on the iPhone 5s to 1400:1 on the iPhone 6. It also employs what it calls dual-domain pixels that help improve the viewing angles and also improve color accuracy. The display also has an oleophobic coating on top and shatter proof glass protection.

Motorola Droid Turbo has a 5.2-inch display with Quad-HD resolution (1440 x 2560) and the highest pixel density of any smartphone in the market at 565PPI. The Super AMOLED panel has higher contrast ratio and deep black levels compared to the iPhone 6 display, but it isn’t as bright and offers lower color accuracy than the Motorola Droid Turbo. That means colors are over-saturated and sunlight legibility isn’t the best.
With its much higher screen resolution you might have expected the Droid Turbo to be the clear winner in this round, but unfortunately its poor color accuracy and low brightness means that this round is a tie.

Processor

The biggest upgrade with new flagship smartphones until last year had been the chipset performance. But that has not been the case this year. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 unveiled earlier this year wasn’t much different from last year’s snapdragon 800 and the latest Snapdragon 805 is also largely the same as far as application performance goes. The Apple A8 chip is also not as big of an upgrade as the A7 was last year.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 chipset on the Motorola Droid turbo is locked at 2.7GHz and has four Krait 450 cores. More than the processor, it is the GPU that impresses. The new Adreno 420 GPU is significantly more powerful than the Snapdragon 800 chipset from last year and can handle Quad-HD or even higher resolution displays effortlessly.
Apple’s iPhone 6 has the 1.4GHz dual-core A8 chipset that comes with Imagination Technologies PowerVR GX6450 GPU. The two Cyclone cores are 64-bit compatible just like the A7 chip from last year. Though there is no significant jump in clock speed, the A8 chip is manufactured in a 20nm process and is thus more efficient.

As far as benchmarks are concerned, the iPhone 6 does better in terms of CPU benchmarks while the GPU benchmarks place the Droid Turbo higher. And since the iPhone 6 has a much lower resolution, which works in its favor too. So this round is also a tie.

Dimensions

The dimensions of a device do not influence buying decision but since smartphones today are a lot bigger than earlier, a compact design definitely helps in making it more comfortable to hold in the hand.

The Motorola Droid Turbo has overall dimensions of 143.5 x 73.3 x 8.3 while the Apple iPhone 6 measures 138.1 x 67 x 6.9mm. Even though the Motorola Droid Turbo has a display that is 0.5” larger, it isn’t much larger in terms of the overall dimensions. The iPhone 6 is still going to be more comfortable to hold in the hand thanks to slightly smaller width and thinner profile with rounded edges. But as far as screen-to-body ratio is concerned the iPhone 6 is behind the Droid Turbo with a ratio of 65.67%. The Droid Turbo in comparison has a screen-to-body ratio of 70.76%.

So that makes the Motorola Droid Turbo the winner here as it packs a 0.5” larger display in a body that isn’t much bigger than iPhone 6 and has much thinner bezels.

Memory

As the sizes of apps and games keep getting bigger and bigger, limited internal storage doesn’t work anymore for most users. Earlier 16GB memory would have been sufficient for most users, but today even light users may find it difficult to live with 16GB storage.

Apple has thankfully decided to address that issue and offers the iPhone 6 with higher internal storage option of 128GB on the most expensive model. The base model still comes with 16GB storage though, while the middle variant gets 64GB storage instead of the earlier 32GB. As is usual with Apple products, you won’t find a microSD card slot.
Motorola Droid Turbo comes with two storage size options – 32GB and 64GB. The higher 64GB storage only comes with the Black Ballistic Nylon option. The Droid Turbo doesn’t offer a microSD card slot either, so you will be restricted to the maximum 64GB storage option it comes with.

As far as RAM goes, the Droid Turbo clearly has the upper hand as it comes with 3GB RAM. The iPhone 6 still comes with 1GB RAM, much like its predecessor. But in terms of performance it doesn’t really have any negative impact on the iPhone as iOS handles RAM differently than Android.

Since the iPhone 6 comes with the higher 128GB memory option, it is the winner in this round.

Connectivity

Connectivity options on most high-end devices these days are pretty similar. So if you’re deciding between two smartphones, connectivity options would perhaps be the last thing you would compare.

The Apple iPhone 6 offers Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac dual-band, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, Apple Lightning, and LTE Cat.4 connectivity with maximum download speeds of 150Mbps and maximum upload speeds of 50Mbps. But the NFC connectivity on the iPhone 6 is only for the Apple Pay mobile payment service and cannot be used to connect and transfer files to and from other devices.

The Motorola Droid Turbo also comes with Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac dual-band, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and LTE Cat.4 support as the iPhone 6 but also has an IR blaster built-in and uses microUSB 2.0. The Infrared port allows it to function as a universal remote control for home entertainment devices.

Thanks to the IR and functional NFC, this round goes to the Motorola Droid Turbo.

Camera

As smartphone cameras are becoming more and more capable with every new generation, the camera is becoming an important criteria for most buyers when buying a new smartphone.

On paper, the Motorola Droid Turbo is the clear winner in terms of the camera. It has a 21MP rear camera with an f2.0 aperture lens, dual-LED flash, Auto HDR, and support for 4K video recording at 24fps. The front-facing camera has 2MP resolution and can record videos in 1080p resolution.

The Apple iPhone 6 has a much lower resolution 8MP rear camera with an f2.2 aperture lens, dual-LED TrueTone flash, 240fps slow-motion video capture and 1080p video recording at 60fps. It also has phase detection auto focus feature thanks to the new focus pixels that allow it to focus much quicker than most smartphone cameras. It also have a very capable digital stabilization. The front camera has a lower resolution than the Droid Turbo though, at 1.2MP.
But as far as the actual quality of photos is concerned, it is the iPhone 6 that manages to impress more. The camera might have a lower resolution but it provides consistently good results and is significantly superior than the Droid Turbo in low-light and has superior stabilization as well. But when it comes to video recording, the Droid Turbo definitely has the edge thanks to 4K video capture that is a lot more detailed than the 1080p videos recorded by the iPhone 6.

With its superior imaging and more consistent and quicker auto-focus, the iPhone 6 wins this round.

Operating System

This round is quite subjective as both these smartphones run very different operating systems and everyone may not necessarily have the same preference.

The Motorola Droid Turbo currently runs Android 4.4.4 KitKat but is expected to receive an update to Android 5.0 Lollipop in the very near future. Motorola has included a variety of useful features on top its almost stock Android UI. Some of these are Moto Assist, Moto Actions, Moto Voice, and Moto Display. It also has an always on voice command feature that makes use of a low power natural language processor made by TI.

Apple iPhone 6 comes with the latest iOS version 8.1.1. iOS 8 includes many changes that make it a lot more open than the previous iOS7 version and also introduces some features like widgets that have been available on Android since a long time. It also has an improved notification bar, improved TouchID with Apply Pay Mobile payment service, improved Spotlight search, support for third-party keyboards like Swype, and Apple Health Kit API for developers. It also has Metal support that aims at bringing desktop-grade gaming experience to iOS devices.

While Apple has made iOS8 much more likeable than iOS7, Android is still a lot more open and currently it is also more reliable as iOS8 releases so far have been extremely buggy. So this round goes to the Motorola Droid Turbo.

Design

The design of a smartphone may not be a deciding factor for most consumers, but it does play a role for some. For others the design doesn’t matter so much as they would be using a case anyway.

When it comes to design, Apple has been one of the leaders of industrial design in their products. All the iPhones have been good-looking devices and the same goes for almost every product that Apple makes, be it an iPad or a MacBook or an iMac. The iPhone 6 has more rounded edges and sides that make it look similar to the very first iPhone and the iPod Touch 5th gen. The sharp edges from the iPhone 5s are now gone and the device really does feel great to hold in hand. The aluminum unibody design makes it feel solid and adds to its appeal.

The Droid Turbo is not as impressive as the Apple iPhone 6 in terms of the design and build, but it is still a decent looking device with good build quality. It uses a combination of metallized glass fiber and Kevlar on the 32GB model and ballistic nylon with aluminum on the 64GB model.

So the design round goes to the Apple iPhone 6.

Battery Life

Among the most important criteria when choosing between two smartphones for most people is the battery life. In case of entry-level smartphones it might play such a big role in the decision-making process, but in case of flagship devices it certainly is extremely critical.

The iPhone 6 has only a slightly larger battery than the iPhone 5s, rated at 1810mAh. For some strange reason Apple decided that only the bigger iPhone 6 Plus needed a big upgrade to the battery capacity and not the iPhone 6. Nonetheless, the iPhone 6 is still a good improvement over the iPhone 5s from last year and can get you through a single work day easily.

Motorola Droid Turbo comes with a huge 3900mAh capacity battery, more than twice larger than the iPhone 6 battery. Thanks to the large size, the Droid Turbo has excellent battery stamina and is one of the best smartphones out there when it comes to battery life. You can expect 2-days of moderate usage easily out of it.

This round goes to the Droid Turbo. There is simply no contest here.

Price

The Motorola Droid Turbo is currently available only via Verizon Wireless. The carrier is selling the Droid Turbo for $199 on a 2-year contract. The 64GB variant is slightly more expensive and would cost you $249 on a 2-year contract.

Apple’s iPhone 6 is available via all major US carriers starting at $199 for the 16GB variant and going up to $399 for the 128GB variant. For a direct comparison, the 64GB iPhone 6 has been priced at $299. That is $50 more expensive than the Motorola Droid Turbo.

Thanks to its lower price, the Droid Turbo wins this round.

Conclusions

Now that we have reached the end of our comparison, let us do a small recap and find out which smartphone won more rounds.

The Apple iPhone 6 managed to win in only three categories – memory, camera and design. The Droid Turbo on the other hand managed to win in five categories – price, battery life, operating system, connectivity, and dimensions. Two rounds were declared a tie.

With wins in five categories, the Droid Turbo is the winner of this comparison. It has a much better battery life, a superior OS, better connectivity options, more compact design and is also cheaper. It is also equally as powerful as the iPhone 6 and offers 4K Ultra HD video recording.