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The MobileXPRT 3 Community Preview is here!

The MobileXPRT 3 Community Preview is now available to BenchmarkXPRT Development Community members! If you are not familiar with the updates and changes we implemented in the newest version of MobileXPRT, you can read more in the XPRT blog.

Members can access the MobileXPRT 3 Community Preview APK on the MobileXPRT tab in the Members’ Area. We also posted an installation guide that provides a general overview of the app and walks users through each step. The entire process takes about five minutes on most devices.

If you have any questions about MobileXPRT 3 or joining the community, please let us know. Happy testing!

Justin

The MobileXPRT 3 Community Preview is almost here!

We appreciate everyone’s patience and feedback during the MobileXPRT 3 development process. We’re in the process of wrapping up some final testing and expect to release the Community Preview (CP) within the next week.

The first thing testers will notice about the CP is a new UI/UX experience. The aesthetic is completely different than MobileXPRT 2015. We’ve made it easy to select and deselect individual workloads by tapping the workload name, and we’ve consolidated common menu items into an Android-style task bar at the bottom of the screen to improve navigation.

Fundamentally, we rebuilt MobileXPRT with Android Studio SDK 27 to bring it up to date with contemporary Android development standards. While we kept the five workloads from MobileXPRT 2015, we gave one a major overhaul, updated the test content in the remaining four, and added a sixth workload: Optical Character Recognition. You can find more details about these changes in our earlier discussion about MobileXPRT 3 development in the blog.

The screenshots below show the MobileXPRT 3 main screen, how the screen looks when users customize the combination of workloads, the end-of-test results screen, and the archived results page with one test result view expanded. Note that the archived results page also displays the median of all overall test scores completed to date.

We’ll announce the CP in a community message and here on the blog when it goes live. As with all community previews, the MobileXPRT 3 CP will be available only to BenchmarkXPRT Development Community members. If you have any questions about MobileXPRT 3 or joining the community, please let us know. Happy testing!

Justin

MobileXPRT 3 start screen   MobileXPRT 3 select workloadsMobileXPRT 3 results   MobileXPRT 3 results library

Notes from the lab: Updates on HDXPRT 4, MobileXPRT 3, and AIXPRT

The next couple of months will be very busy with XPRT activity, so we want to update readers on what to expect. Depending on a number of factors, we expect to release HDXPRT 4 and MobileXPRT 3 community previews (CPs) within the next four to six weeks. We’re also hoping to publish an early AIXPRT request-for-comment (RFC) build on GitHub within the same time frame. Here’s a little more detail about each of these developments.

HDXPRT 4: We originally planned to release the HDXPRT 4 CP several weeks ago. As we recently discussed in the blog, a lot has changed in the Windows 10 development world within a short period of time, and Microsoft has released a number of new Redstone 5/October 2018 Update builds in quick succession. While our HDXPRT 4 CP candidate testing went well overall, we observed some inconsistent workload scores when testing on some of the new Windows builds. Since then, we believe we’ve narrowed down the list of possible causes to a few specific graphics driver versions, but we’re still testing to make sure there are no other immediate issues. As soon as we’re confident in that assessment, we’ll release the CP along with any relevant information about the affected graphics drivers.

MobileXPRT 3: MobileXPRT 3 development is progressing nicely, and we’re close to completing a CP candidate build. We’ll test that build extensively on our library of Android phones and tablets, and barring any unforeseen issues, we plan to release the CP in the next few weeks.

AIXPRT: AIXPRT is the umbrella name for a set of tools we’re developing to help evaluate machine learning performance. After a great deal of research, we’re getting closer to releasing a build – tentatively called the AIXPRT RFC – for community members and other interested parties to download and review. For a number of reasons, the AIXPRT RFC process will be a little different than our normal XPRT RFC and CP process. We’ll be offering more information on the AIXPRT RFC build over the next several weeks.

We’re grateful to everyone who’s contributed in any way to each of these projects, and we look forward to sharing the benchmarks with the world. If you have any questions about the XPRTs, please don’t hesitate to ask!

Justin

The XPRT Spotlight Black Friday Showcase helps you shop with confidence

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are almost here, and you may be feeling overwhelmed by the sea of tech gifts to choose from. The XPRTs are here to help. We’ve gathered the product specs and performance facts for some of the hottest tech devices in one convenient place—the XPRT Spotlight Black Friday Showcase. The Showcase is a free shopping tool that provides side-by-side comparisons of some of the season’s most popular smartphones, laptops, Chromebooks, tablets, and PCs. It helps you make informed buying decisions so you can shop with confidence this holiday season.

Want to know how the Google Pixel 3 stacks up against the Apple iPhone XS or Samsung Galaxy Note9 in web browsing performance or screen size? Simply select any two devices in the Showcase and click Compare. You can also search by device type if you’re interested in a specific form factor such as consoles or tablets.

The Showcase doesn’t go away after Black Friday. We’ll rename it the XPRT Holiday Buying Showcase and continue to add devices throughout the shopping season. So be sure to check back in and see how your tech gifts measure up.

If this is the first you’ve heard about the XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight, here’s a little background. Our hands-on testing process equips consumers with accurate information about how devices function in the real world. We test devices using our industry-standard BenchmarkXPRT tools: WebXPRT, MobileXPRT, TouchXPRT, CrXPRT, BatteryXPRT, and HDXPRT. In addition to benchmark results, we include photographs, specs, and prices for all products. New devices come online weekly, and you can browse the full list of almost 150 that we’ve featured to date on the Spotlight page.

If you represent a device vendor and want us to feature your product in the XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight, please visit the website for more details.

Do you have suggestions for the Spotlight page or device recommendations? Let us know!

Justin

Updates on HDXPRT 4 and MobileXPRT 3

There’s a lot going on with the XPRTs, so we want to offer a quick update.

On the HDXPRT 4 front, we’re currently testing community preview candidate builds across a variety of laptops and desktops. Testing is going well, but as is often the case prior to a release, we’re still tweaking the code as necessary when we run into bugs. We’re excited about HDXPRT 4 and look forward to the community seeing how much faster and easier to use it is than previous versions. You can read more about what’s to come in HDXPRT 4 here.

On the MobileXPRT 3 front, proof-of-concept testing for the new and updated workloads went well, and we’re now working to implement the new UI. Below, you can see a mockup of the new MobileXPRT 3 start screen for phones. The aesthetic is completely different than MobileXPRT 2015, and is in line with the clean, bright look we used for WebXPRT 3 and HDXPRT 4. We’ve made it easy to select and deselect individual workloads by tapping the workload name (deselected workloads are grayed out), and we’ve consolidated common menu items into an Android-style taskbar at the bottom of the screen. Please note that this is an early view and some aspects of the screen will change. For instance, we’re certain that the final receipt-scanning workload won’t be called “Optical character recognition.”

We’ll share more information about HDXPRT 4 and MobileXPRT 3 in the coming weeks. If you have any questions about HDXPRT or MobileXPRT, or would like to share your ideas, please get in touch!

Justin

MobileXPRT-3-main-phone

Notes from the lab: choosing a calibration system for MobileXPRT 3

Last week, we shared some details about what to expect in MobileXPRT 3. This week, we want to provide some insight into one part of the MobileXPRT development process, choosing a calibration system.

First, some background. For each of the benchmarks in the XPRT family, we select a calibration system using criteria we’ll explain below. This system serves as a reference point, and we use it to calculate scores that will help users understand a single benchmark result. The calibration system for MobileXPRT 2015 is the Motorola DROID RAZR M. We structured our calculation process so that the mean performance score from repeated MobileXPRT 2015 runs on that device is 100. A device that completes the same workloads 20 percent faster than the DROID RAZR M would have a performance score of 120, and one that performs the test 20 percent more slowly would have a score of 80. (You can find a more in-depth explanation of MobileXPRT score calculations in the Exploring MobileXPRT 2015 white paper.)

When selecting a calibration device, we are looking for a relevant reference point in today’s market. The device should be neither too slow to handle modern workloads nor so fast that it outscores most devices on the market. It should represent a level of performance that is close to what the majority of consumers experience, and one that will continue to be relevant for some time. This approach helps to build context for the meaning of the benchmark’s overall score. Without that context, testers can’t tell whether a score is fast or slow just by looking at the raw number. When compared to a well-known standard such as the calibration device, however, the score has more informative value.

To determine a suitable calibration device for MobileXPRT 3, we started by researching the most popular Android phones by market share around the world. It soon became clear that in many major markets, the Samsung Galaxy S8 ranked first or second, or at least appeared in the top five. As last year’s first Samsung flagship, the S8 is no longer on the cutting edge, but it has specs that many current mid-range phones are deploying, and the hardware should remain relevant for a couple of years.

For all of these reasons, we made the Samsung Galaxy S8 the calibration device for MobileXPRT 3. The model in our lab has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC, 4 GB of RAM, and runs Android 7.0 (Nougat). We think it has the balance we’re looking for.

If you have any questions or concerns about MobileXPRT 3, calibration devices, or score calculations, please let us know. We look forward to sharing more information about MobileXPRT 3 as we get closer to the community preview.

Justin

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