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WebXPRT’s global reach

In our last blog post, we reflected on the 10-year anniversary of the WebXPRT launch by looking at the consistent growth in the number of WebXPRT runs over the last decade. Today, we wrap up our focus on WebXPRT’s anniversary by sharing some data about the benchmark’s truly global reach.

We occasionally update the community on some of the reach metrics we track by publishing a new version of the “XPRTs around the world” infographic. The metrics include completed test runs, benchmark downloads, and mentions of the XPRTs in advertisements, articles, and tech reviews. This information gives us insight into how many people are using the XPRT tools, and publishing the infographic helps readers and community members see the impact the XPRTs are having around the world.

WebXPRT is our most widely used benchmark by far, and is responsible for much of the XPRT’s global reach. Since February 2013, users have run WebXPRT more than 1,176,000 times. Those test runs took place in over 924 cities located in 81 countries on six continents. Some interesting new locations for completed WebXPRT runs include Rajarampur, Bangladesh; Al Muharraq, Bahrain; Manila, The Philippines; Skopje, Macedonia; and Ljubljana, Slovenia.

We’re pleased that WebXPRT has proven to be a useful and reliable performance evaluation tool for so many people in so many geographically distant locations. If you’ve ever run WebXPRT in a country that is not highlighted in the “XPRTs around the world” infographic, we’d love to hear about it!

Justin

WebXPRT runs: A decade of growth

In our last blog post, we celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the WebXPRT launch by looking back on the WebXPRT team’s accomplishments over the last decade. The incremental steps and milestone improvements we discussed all contributed to carving out a lasting place for WebXPRT in the benchmarking world and helped to grow its reputation for being a reliable, effective, and easy to use measurement tool.

WebXPRT’s growth is most evident when we look at the rising number of completed test runs over the last 10 years. Since the first WebXPRT launch in 2013, we’ve seen a steady increase in the number of tests people are running. To put the increase in perspective, we had more runs last month alone (17,300) than we recorded in the first 10 months that WebXPRT was available (11,984).

That growth has helped us to reach and surpass the million-run mark, but the most exciting aspect of seeing a consistent increase in WebXPRT testing is the knowledge that the benchmark is proving to be useful to more people in more places around the world. In our next blog post, we’ll discuss WebXPRT’s truly global reach and some of the surprising cities and countries where people have been using it to test their gear.

We’re grateful for all the testers that have helped WebXPRT grow during the last decade. If you have any questions or comments about using WebXPRT, 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 will be at Mobile World Congress later this month!

Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2023 kicks off on February 27th, and we’re excited that Mark Van Name will be attending the event for the first time since the last pre-pandemic show in 2019. Each year, MWC offers a great opportunity to examine the new trends and technologies that will shape mobile technology in the years to come. The major themes of this year’s show include the latest advances in 5G and IoT technologies, along with what GSMA is calling “Reality+.” Reality+ refers to the intersection of AI, AR, VR, and 5G, and the potential impacts of these immersive technologies on our future.

Mark will be sharing his thoughts from this year’s show here in the XPRT blog, so be sure to stayed tuned. Will you be attending MWC this year? If so, let us know!

Justin

Check out our CES 2023 recap video!

We have a very talented studio team here at Principled Technologies, and this week, the team worked with the XPRTs to put together a CES 2023 recap video. In it, I discuss why we traveled to CES, my overall impressions from the show, and how the ideas and technologies presented at the show may influence the development of future XPRT benchmarks. If you missed last week’s post about my initial thoughts on the advances in AR and VR technology at the show, or you didn’t get a chance to see some of our photos from the show on social media, this week’s video provides a good summary of our CES-related activity.

To view the video, you can follow this link or click the screenshot below. If you followed CES this year and have any thoughts about how the XPRTs can help to evaluate emerging technologies, we’d love to hear from you!

Justin

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