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Category: Mobile devices

Contribute to WebXPRT’s AI capabilities with your NPU-equipped gear

A few weeks ago, we announced that we’re developing a new auxiliary WebXPRT 4 workload focused on local, browser-based AI technology. This is an exciting project for us, and as we work to determine the best approach from the perspective of frameworks, APIs, inference models, and test scenarios, we’re also thinking ahead to the testing process. To best understand how the new workload will impact system performance, we’re going to need to test it on hardware equipped with the latest generation of neural processing units (NPUs).

NPUs are not new, but the technology is advancing rapidly, and a growing number of PC and laptop manufacturers are releasing NPU-equipped systems. Several vendors have announced plans to release systems equipped with all-new NPUs in the latter half of this year. As is often the case with bleeding-edge technology, however, official release dates do not always coincide with widespread availability.

We want to evaluate new AI-focused WebXPRT workloads on the widest possible range of new systems, but getting a wide selection of gear equipped with the latest NPUs may take quite a while through normal channels. For that reason, we’ve decided to ask our readers for help to expedite the process.

If you’re an OEM or vendor representative with access to the latest generation of NPU-equipped gear and want to contribute to WebXPRT’s evolution, consider sending us any PCs, white boxes, laptops, 2-in-1s, or tablets (on loan) that would be suitable for NPU-focused testing. We have decades of experience serving as trusted testers of confidential and pre-release gear, so we’re well-acquainted with concerns about confidentiality that may come into play, and we won’t publish any information about the systems or related test results without your permission.

We will, though, be happy to share with you our test results on your systems, and we’d love to hear any guidance or other feedback from you on this new workload.

We’re open to any suitable gear, but we’re especially interested in AMD Ryzen AI, Apple M4, Intel Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake, and Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite systems.

If you’re interested in sending us gear for WebXPRT development testing, please contact us. We’ll work out all the necessary details. Thanks in advance for your help!

Justin

Support for MobileXPRT 3 will likely end soon

In a past blog post, we discussed our plan to move several older versions of XPRT benchmarks to an XPRT archive page. Some of those legacy XPRTs still function correctly, and testers occasionally use them, but a few no longer work on the latest versions of the operating systems or browsers that we designed them to test. With the archive page, we can prevent potential confusion for new users who visit current XPRT pages, but still provide longtime users with continued access to old tests.

You can find more information about the XPRTs that we’ll be moving to the archive page here, but today, we want to let MobileXPRT users know that there’s a high likelihood that MobileXPRT 3 will be joining the list of archived XPRTs in the very near future. The Google Play Store has notified us that, due to evolving requirements for apps in newer versions of Android, we must update our MobileXPRT 3 app package to target an Android API level within one year of the latest Android release. If we don’t update the app to meet that requirement by November 1, users will no longer be able to access MobileXPRT 3 through the Google Play Store.

Though a small number of labs and reviewers still use MobileXPRT 3 to test phones and tablets around the world, we don’t feel current usage is high enough for us to justify committing resources to an update at this point. We had hoped that even if MobileXPRT 3 became inaccessible via the Google Play Store, it would still be possible to sideload the app for testing on newer Android devices. After experimenting with installation options in the lab, however, we think it’s likely that settings on devices running Android 11 and up will prevent both Google Play and sideload installations after November 1. The situation may change, but right now, we don’t expect any method to work after that date. If you try, you’ll likely encounter a message during the installation process that says, “This app was built for an older version of Android and may not work properly. Try checking for updates, or contact the developer.” If you attempt to continue the installation process after that message appears, the app will crash.

Both Android and Chrome developers know that the respective stores sometimes extend these types of deadlines. We hope that will be the case here, but we have no information that would lead us to anticipate an extension. If there is no extension, we will still make MobileXPRT 3 available for testing on older Android devices, but we will then have to move it to the XPRT archive page.

We’re grateful for everyone who has used MobileXPRT 3 in the past, and we apologize for any convenience this change may cause. If you have any questions or concerns about MobileXPRT 3 access, please let us know

Justin

The Mobile World Congress 2023 recap video is live!

Once again, the talented studio team here at Principled Technologies has worked with the XPRT team to put together some great content. This week, we published a recap video of Mark’s recent trip to Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2023 in Barcelona. In the video, Mark discusses how “velocity” was the headline theme of this year’s MWC, but infrastructure was the true backbone of the show. The challenges of developing the infrastructure necessary for tomorrow’s tech aren’t limited to obvious topics like 5G deployment, bandwidth, and accessibility; they also include “soft” infrastructure topics like security, management, and reliability. As everything gets faster, we’ll need tools such as the XPRTs to provide reliable information about which devices can handle the increased demands of tomorrow’s tech.

We encourage you to check out the video, along with Mark’s blog post from the show and MWC-related photos on social media. To view the video, you can follow this link or click the screenshot below. If you attended or followed MWC this year and have any thoughts about how the XPRTs can help to evaluate cutting-edge technologies, we’d love to hear from you!

Justin

Mobile World Congress 2023: Infrastructure led the way

When the tech industry is at its best, a virtuous cycle of capabilities and use cases chases its own tail to produce ever-better tech for us all. Faster CPUs drive new usage models, which in turn emerge and swamp the CPUs, which then must get faster. Better screens make us want higher-quality video, which requires more bandwidth to deliver and causes us to desire even better displays. Apps connect us in more ways, but those connections require more bandwidth, which leads to new apps that can take advantage of those faster connections. And on and on.

Put a finger on the cycle at any given moment, and you’ll see that while all the elements are in motion, some are the stars of the moment. To keep the cycle going, it’s crucial for these areas to improve the most. At Mobile World Congress 2023 (#MWC23), that distinction belonged to infrastructure. Yes, some new mobile phones were on display, Lenovo showed off new ThinkPads, and other mobile devices were in abundance, but as I walked the eight huge halls, I couldn’t help but notice the heavy emphasis on infrastructure.

5G, for example, is real now—but it’s far from everywhere. Telecom providers have to figure out how to profitably build out the networks necessary to support it. The whole industry must solve the problems of delivering 5G at huge scale, handle the traffic increases it will bring, switch and route the data, and ultimately make sure the end devices can take full advantage of that data. Management and security remain vital whenever data is flying around, so those softer pieces of infrastructure also matter greatly.

Inevitably and always, to know if we as an industry are meeting these challenges, we must measure performance—both in the raw speed sense and in the broader sense of the word. Are we seeing the full bandwidth we expect? Are devices handling the data properly and at speed? Where’s the bottleneck now? Are we delivering on the schedules we promised? Questions such as these are key concerns in every tech cycle—and some of them are exactly what the XPRTs focus on.

As we improve our infrastructure, we hope to see the benefits at a personal level. When you’re using a device—whether it’s a smart watch, a mobile phone, or a laptop—you need it to do its job well, respond to you quickly, and show you what you want when you want it. When your device makes you wait, it can be helpful to know if the bandwidth feeding data to the device is the bottleneck or if the device simply can’t keep up with the flow of data it’s receiving. The XPRTs can help you figure out what’s going on, and they will continue to be useful and important as the tech cycle spins on. If history is our guide, the infrastructure focus of MWC23 will lead to greater capabilities that require even better devices down the line. We look forward to testing them.

The XPRTs can help with your back-to-school shopping

The new school year is upon us, and learners of all ages are looking for tech devices that have the capabilities they will need in the coming year. The tech marketplace can be confusing, and competing claims can be hard to navigate. The XPRTs are here to help! Whether you’re shopping for a new phone, tablet, Chromebook, laptop, or desktop, the XPRTs can provide reliable, industry-trusted performance scores that can cut through all the noise.

A good place to start looking for scores is the WebXPRT 4 results viewer. The viewer displays WebXPRT 4 scores from over 175 devices—including many hot new releases—and we’re adding new scores all the time. To learn more about the viewer’s capabilities and how you can use it to compare devices, check out this blog post.

Another resource we offer is the XPRT results browser. The browser is the most efficient way to access the XPRT results database, which currently holds more than 3,000 test results from over 120 sources, including major tech review publications around the world, OEMs, and independent testers. It offers a wealth of current and historical performance data across all of the XPRT benchmarks and hundreds of devices. You can read more about how to use the results browser here.

Also, if you’re considering a popular device, chances are good that a recent tech review includes an XPRT score for that device. Two quick ways to find these reviews: (1) go to your favorite tech review site and search for “XPRT” and (2) go to a search engine and enter the device name and XPRT name (e.g., “Apple MacBook Air” and “WebXPRT”). Here are a few recent tech reviews that use one of the XPRTs to evaluate a popular device:

The XPRTs can help consumers make better-informed and more confident tech purchases. As this school year begins, we hope you’ll find the data you need on our site or in an XPRT-related tech review. If you have any questions about the XPRTs, XPRT scores, or the results database please feel free to ask!

Justin

It’s time to shop for the holidays, and the XPRTs are here to help!

The holiday season is fast approaching, and with widespread product shortages and supply chain interruptions in the tech industry, it’s wise to start your holiday shopping now. If you’re considering phones, tablets, Chromebooks, or laptops as gifts, but are unsure where to get reliable information about the devices, the XPRTs can help!

One of the core functions of the XPRTs is to cut through the marketing noise by providing objective, reliable measures of a device’s performance. For example, instead of trying to guess whether a new Chromebook is fast enough to handle the demands of remote learning, you can use its CrXPRT and WebXPRT performance scores to see how it stacks up against the competition on everyday tasks.

A good place to start looking for device scores is our XPRT results browser, which lets you access our database of more than 2,800 test results from over 110 sources, including major tech review publications around the world, OEMs, and independent testers. You can find a wealth of current and historical performance data across all the XPRT benchmarks and hundreds of devices. Learn how to use the results browser here.

If you’re considering a popular device, chances are good that a recent tech review includes an XPRT score for that device. You can find these reviews by going to your favorite tech review site and searching for “XPRT,” or entering the name of the device and the appropriate XPRT (e.g., “Apple iPad” and “WebXPRT”) in a search engine. Here are a few recent tech reviews that use one or more of the XPRTs to evaluate popular devices:

The XPRTs can help consumers make better-informed and more confident tech purchases this holiday season, and we hope you’ll find the data you need on our site or in an XPRT-related tech review. If you have any questions about the XPRTs, XPRT scores, or the results database please feel free to ask!

Justin

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