BenchmarkXPRT Development Community Blog

The value of diversity

on November 13, 2014

It’s great to hear from community members who are using the XPRTs. Having a pool of users with diverse viewpoints is critical for successful software development. While we try very hard to find problems, there will always be cases we miss.

For example, we talked recently about the challenges of working in a multilingual world. Just this week, Acer reported an interesting bug in the CrXPRT community preview. If your language is set to Chinese, the battery test will estimate the battery life as expected. However, a rundown test will return the message “Cannot calculate total run time.” This does not happen when the language is set to English.

We have verified this problem. In the next week or so, we’ll be releasing a second community preview containing a fix for this and a few other issues.

We’ve talked before about the difficulties of maintaining software in a fast moving world. Late last week, we received a new Nexus 9. It encountered a problem during the MobileXPRT tests, so we fixed the problem and will be releasing a patched build tomorrow.

Don’t forget, as we said last week, we’ll be releasing the WebXPRT 2015 design overview tomorrow. We are looking forward to the feedback from all our community members.

Eric

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Posted in Android, Chrome OS, CrXPRT, MobileXPRT, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2015 |

Upcoming experiments

By Eric Hale

on November 6, 2014

Next week, we’ll be releasing the design overview for WebXPRT 2015. WebXPRT 2013 has been an enormous success, having been run tens of thousands of times.

One of the big improvements we are considering for WebXPRT 2015 is adding experimental tests. A big reason for WebXPRT’s success is that it runs on almost every Web-enabled device. We consider it essential to preserve this broad compatibility. However, there are interesting Web technologies that simply are not available on all devices.

Our proposal is to add experimental tests to WebXPRT. These tests would be optional and would not be included in the Overall score, so WebXPRT would still be able to compare the performance of widely different devices. We are looking at technologies such as Web Workers, WebGL, and pre-compiled JavaScript (asm.js).

In addition to adding experimental tests, we are looking at ways to improve the UI, add automation, add new tests, update old tests, and more!

If you are a community member, you’ll get a notice when the overview is available. We will definitely want to know what you think! If you are not a member, it’s a great time to join.

If you have any thoughts on these ideas, or have ideas of your own, please let us know!

Eric

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Performance benchmarking, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2015, What makes a good benchmark? |

Getting the most from the XPRTs

By Eric Hale

on October 30, 2014

BatteryXPRT can measure battery life three ways: in Airplane mode, Wireless connection mode, and Cellular connection mode.

A couple of weeks ago, Tom’s Hardware ran a review of the NVIDIA Shield Tablet that shows the value of being able to compare different ways of using your device. The review gave results for two of the three modes, Airplane mode and Wireless mode, for the devices under test. While all devices had lower battery life in Wireless mode, the NVIDIA Shield Tablet showed a much larger difference between the two modes than other devices.

The review offers some technical reasons why this might be so. However, the review also includes a sentence that goes to the heart of our mission to provide easy-to-use tools that reflect real-world usage and can be used in a variety of ways. As the reviewer at Tom’s Hardware noted: “I’ve also noticed what I would consider excessive power drain during standby with Wi-Fi left on, which subjectively corroborates these results.” That is what we like to hear!

We are always looking for ways to make our tools more versatile and useful. If you have ideas, please let us know!

Eric

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Posted in Android, Battery life, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Benchmarking, BenchmarkXPRT |

Has it only been a month?

By Eric Hale

on October 23, 2014

Operating systems will continue to evolve. Whether you consider that a promise or a threat, it’s a fact. Those who write software know the day will come when it’s running in an environment that did not exist when you wrote it. Sometimes you get lucky. WebXPRT, for example, has sailed through the release of new versions of Windows, Android, and iOS with no problems.

At other times, you have to take action. Last month, we alerted you to an issue MobileXPRT had with the pre-release version of Android L. We’ve released an update to MobileXPRT that resolves the issue with Android L.

The technical preview for Windows 10 became available to members of Microsoft’s Windows Insider Program on the first of October, and we’ve had a report that TouchXPRT does not run reliably on it. We are currently investigating this and will let you know the details as soon as we have them. We are checking HDXPRT on Windows 10 as well.

Of course, this is what previews are for. By addressing these issues now, the XPRTs will be ready to support these operating systems when they’re released to the public.

If you are running a preview version of Windows 10 and see a problem with any of our benchmarks, please let us know.

Operating systems continue to evolve. There’s already a new build of the Windows 10 preview. More are on the way. As they come, we will be there testing the XPRTs on them.

Eric

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Posted in Android, BenchmarkXPRT development community, HDXPRT, HDXPRT 2014, MobileXPRT, Windows 10 |

CrXPRT is here!

By Eric Hale

on October 15, 2014

Today we are releasing the CrXPRT 2014 Community Preview (CP1). As mentioned in a previous post, CrXPRT contains performance and battery life tests. The performance suite includes five scenarios utilizing Web browsing and JavaScript workloads, plus Portable Native Client (PNaCl) and WebGL-based scenarios. The battery life test incorporates all of the performance workloads and adds video playback, audio playback, and HTML5 gaming scenarios.

The battery life test in CP1 builds on the lessons we learned from developing BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android. In fact, we’ve been able to improve on the testing time. BatteryXPRT 2014 requires 5.5 hours to estimate battery life; CP1 can estimate battery life in only 3.5 hours. The battery test in CP1 still requires the device be put in developer mode, so we’re investigating the new Chrome OS battery status APIs. We hope these will make it possible to remove this restriction in a future release.

The estimates for battery life are generally pretty accurate. However, we have seen runs where the battery life results were much higher than expected. We are continuing to investigate this. If you see an anomalous result, please let us know. It is worth noting that the performance scores have been very consistent.

Because this is a community preview, you have to be a community member to download it. However, joining is very easy.

Check out the new CrXPRT, and let us know what you think!

Eric

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Posted in Battery life, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Chrome OS, Community Preview, CrXPRT, Performance benchmarking |

News from the factory floor

By Eric Hale

on October 9, 2014

As we mentioned last week, we have BatteryXPRT and MobileXPRT news:

Today, we’re releasing a new build of MobileXPRT 2013 at MobileXPRT.com and the Google Play store. This build addresses issues we saw when testing MobileXPRT on the beta build of Android L and the experimental ART runtime. The tests have not changed, and the scores are comparable with previous MobileXPRT 2013 scores.

Also, the BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android APKs are now available at BatteryXPRT.com. Up to now, only the full installer, including the content for the tests, was available on our Web site. The APKs are much smaller and allow you to download the test content during installation. For users who have trouble accessing the Google Play store, these APKs may make it easier to download the benchmark.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us at BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

Don’t forget: we’re releasing the community preview of CrXPRT next week!

Eric

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Posted in Android, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Benchmarking, BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Chrome OS, Community Preview, CrXPRT, MobileXPRT |

The value of diversity

Upcoming experiments

Getting the most from the XPRTs

Has it only been a month?

CrXPRT is here!

News from the factory floor

Check out the other XPRTs: