Month: May 2013

It’s finally here!

on May 30, 2013

As the community members know, we released the MobileXPRT 2013 community preview yesterday. As I said in last week’s blog A look into the future, you are free to publish results from this community preview.

We hope you’ll submit results to be published in the MobileXPRT database. You’ll find the file containing your results in the MobileXPRT/results directory on the SD card of your device. The results directory will contain a time-stamped directory for each run, for example ALL28May2013112522. You will find a file named mobilexprt_results.xml in the appropriate time-stamped directory. To submit a result, just e-mail the mobilexprt_results.xml file from your run to benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

The benchmark includes a user manual in the UI. In addition to the benchmark itself, you can also find installation instructions and a design overview in the member’s area.

We will make the source code for the community preview available in the next few days.

Given the diversity and changing nature of Android devices, we expect that you may run into some issues. As with any of our community previews, if you encounter any issues, please let us know so we can continue to improve the benchmark as we prepare it for release.

We’re very excited about the release of the MobileXPRT 2013 community preview. If you’re not a member, join and find out what all the excitement is about!

Eric

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Posted in Android, BenchmarkXPRT development community, MobileXPRT |

The MobileXPRT 2013 community preview is available!

By Eric Hale

on May 29, 2013

If you’re a member, you can download it here. If you’re not a member, join and see what the excitement’s about.

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Posted in Community Preview, MobileXPRT |

A look into the future

By Eric Hale

on May 23, 2013

This week, we’ve been testing builds of the upcoming MobileXPRT benchmark. So far, things have been looking really good.

MobileXPRT is designed for testing Android-based devices, from smart phones to tablets. Like TouchXPRT, MobileXPRT uses native code to implement real-world use cases. Mobile XPRT offers two categories of tests: Performance tests and User Experience (UX) tests.

The five Performance tests are Apply Photo Effects, Create Photo Collages, Create Slideshow, Encrypt Personal Content, and Detect Faces to Organize Photos.

The five UX tests are List Scroll, Grid Scroll, Gallery Scroll, Browser Scroll, and Zoom and Pinch.

The benchmark provides a score for each individual test, as well as a rollup score for each category.

Sometime next week, we plan to release the MobileXPRT 2013 Community Preview. The CP, as its name makes clear, is not the final MobileXPRT release. It is, though, a useful tool for beginning to measure Android device performance. It is also a great way for everyone in the community to see the current state of our thinking and to provide feedback—rather than reading a design spec, you can actually run this version of the tool and see what you think!

As with TouchXPRT, we will allow publication of scores from the community preview. We will also be releasing the source code to all community members. If you’re curious about not just what we’re doing but how we’re doing it, you can find out. If you have suggestions about how to do it better, we’re all ears.

As a reminder, the community previews are available only to members of the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community. If you haven’t joined yet, come join us!

Eric

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Posted in Android, BenchmarkXPRT development community, MobileXPRT |

Our baby has a new name!

By Eric Hale

on May 16, 2013

The upcoming Android benchmark will be called MobileXPRT. Thanks to everyone who sent in suggestions. We are testing development builds now and look forward to having a community preview available in the next few weeks.

In other news, the developer license used to build TouchXPRT expired this week. We have created a new version to fix this problem. If you are a TouchXPRT user, you’ll need to download the new version for any future testing. You can find the details here.

As we mentioned in the post Three names, two hosts, we set up a second WebXPRT hosting site to see if that would improve the slow downloads reported in China. To help us better understand the situation, we are going to start logging IP addresses for the host at http://54.251.252.204/webxprt/. We are doing this to see if there are regional differences in the download time. This change does not affect users of WebXPRT at http://www.principledtechnologies.com/benchmarkxprt/webxprt/. Neither host will gather personally identifying information.

Eric

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Posted in MobileXPRT, PhoneXPRT, TouchXPRT, WebXPRT |

Presentation XPRT

By Bill Catchings

on May 9, 2013

A few weeks ago, the Mobile PC Extended Battery Life Working Group (EBL WG) asked me to give a presentation about the BenchmarkXPRT benchmarks during one of their meetings. The group started a little over 10 years ago and is an industry organization focusing on achieving all-day battery life in mobile PC platforms.

There was a catch, of course. The meeting was this week, in Taipei. Luckily, we were able to grant the request without racking up any frequent flier miles—thanks to the wonders of technology, I was able to give the presentation remotely.

Taipei is 12 hours ahead of us here on the East Coast, so I made arrangements to give the presentation last night at 9:30 pm, making it 9:30 am the next day there—the first thing on the agenda for today. (Oh, the vagaries of time zones!)

During the one-hour session we talked about HDXPRT, TouchXPRT, WebXPRT and MobileXPRT (which, for the moment, is how we internally refer to the XPRT formerly known as PhoneXPRT). And of course, we discussed the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community. It went well, and we had some great questions from the group.

It went so well, in fact, that I’d love to do it again. I like talking about the development community and the XPRTs, and would welcome the chance to present to other groups. If you are interested or know an organization that is, you can email us at benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

Bill

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, HDXPRT, MobileXPRT, PhoneXPRT, TouchXPRT |

A happy coincidence

By Bill Catchings

on May 2, 2013

I love new gadgets and even the promise of new ones. Samsung just announced the specs for their upcoming Galaxy Tab 3. Initial reactions to the specs have been somewhat muted to say the least. Basically, they’ve looked at this as only an incremental improvement to the current model. The early rumors of a larger screen and bigger improvements, which turned out to be false, surely contributed to the disappointed reactions.

That being said, some sites claim that the performance of the Galaxy Tab 3 is much higher than the Galaxy Tab 2, particularly regarding graphics. We look forward to verifying these claims ourselves.

Coincidentally, this week we have been playing with an early version of PhoneXPRT (or whatever we end up calling it). So far, things are looking good. We ran it on several devices, including a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2. Like all the XPRT benchmarks, it uses real- world scenarios, which we think result in more useful and accurate results. We’ll talk more about the scenarios in the next few weeks.

It’s a very exciting time in the Android phone and tablet market. I can’t wait to try out subsequent versions of the new benchmark on the latest and greatest Android devices!

Bill

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Posted in MobileXPRT, Performance testing on tablets, PhoneXPRT, Touch-based devices |

Month: May 2013

It’s finally here!

The MobileXPRT 2013 community preview is available!

A look into the future

Our baby has a new name!

Presentation XPRT

A happy coincidence

Check out the other XPRTs: