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Tag Archives: WebXPRT 3

Investigating a possible issue with WebXPRT 4 in iOS 17

Yesterday, Apple revealed the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro at its annual fall event, along with a new version of the iOS mobile operating system (iOS 17). The official iOS 17 launch will take place on September 18th, but before then, users of newer iPhones can install the OS via the Apple Beta Software Program.

Today, a tech journalist informed us that during their testing of iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro with iOS 17 Beta models, WebXPRT 4 has been freezing while running the Encrypt Notes and OCR Scan workload in the Safari 17 browser. Here in the lab, we were able to immediately replicate the issue on an iPhone 12 Pro with iOS 17 Beta model.

Our initial troubleshooting confirmed that WebXPRT 3 successfully runs to completion on iOS 17 Beta, so it appears that the problem is specific to WebXPRT 4. We also confirmed that WebXPRT 4 freezes at the same place when running in the Google Chrome browser on iOS 17 Beta, so we know that the problem does not occur only in Safari.

We’re currently investigating the issue, and will publish our findings here in the blog as soon as we feel confident that we’ve identified both the root cause and a workable solution, if a solution is necessary. One reason a solution would not be necessary is that the issue is a bug on the iOS 17 Beta side that Apple will resolve before the official launch.

We apologize for any inconvenience this issue might cause for tech reviewers and iPhone users, and we appreciate your patience while we figure out what’s going on. If you have any questions about WebXPRT 4, please don’t hesitate to ask!

Justin

A bit of house cleaning at BenchmarkXPRT.com

When we’ve released a new version of an XPRT benchmark app, it’s been our practice for many years to maintain a link to the previous version on the benchmark’s main page. For example, visitors can start on the WebXPRT 4 homepage at WebXPRT.com and follow links to access WebXPRT 3, WebXPRT 2015, and WebXPRT 2013. Historically, we’ve maintained these links because labs and tech reviewers usually take a while to introduce a new benchmark to their testing suite. Continued access to the older benchmarks also allows users to quickly compare new devices to old devices without retesting everything.

That being said, several of the XPRT pages currently contain links to benchmarks that we no longer actively support. Some of those benchmarks 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. While we want to continue to provide a way for longtime XPRT users to access legacy XPRTs,  we also want to avoid potential confusion for new users. We believe our best way forward is to archive older tests in a separate part of the site.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be moving several legacy XPRT benchmarks to an archive section of the site. Once the new section is ready, we’ll link to it from the Extras drop-down menu at the top of BenchmarkXPRT.com. The benchmarks will still be available in the archive, but we will not actively support them or directly link to them from the homepages of active XPRTs.

During this process, we’ll move the following benchmarks to the archive section:

  • WebXPRT 2015 and 2013
  • CrXPRT 2015
  • HDXPRT 2014
  • TouchXPRT 2014
  • MobileXPRT 2015 and 2013

If you have any questions or concerns about the archive process or access to legacy XPRTs, please let us know

Justin

WebXPRT’s mirror host site in Singapore

If you’ve ever spent time exploring WebXPRT.com, you may have noticed a line that says, “If you are in East Asia, you can run WebXPRT from our Singapore host,” followed by a hyperlink with Simplified Chinese characters. We realize that some people may not know why we have a WebXPRT mirror host site in Singapore—or how to use it—so today’s post will cover the basics.

When we first released WebXPRT 2013, some users in mainland China reported slow download times when running the benchmark. These slowdowns affected initial page and workload content load times, but not workload execution, which happens locally. As a result, subtest and overall scores were still consistent with expectations for the devices under test, but it took longer than normal for test runs to complete. In response, we set up a mirror host site in Singapore to facilitate WebXPRT testing in China and other East Asian countries. We continued this practice with subsequent WebXPRT versions, and currently offer Singapore-based instances of WebXPRT 4WebXPRT 3, and WebXPRT 2015.

The link to WebXPRT 4 Singapore on WebXPRT.com

The default UI language on the Singapore site is Simplified Chinese, but users can opt to change the language to English or German. Apart from a different default language, the WebXPRT mirror instances hosted in Singapore are identical to the instances on the main WebXPRT site. If you test a device on WebXPRT Singapore and WebXPRT.com, you should see similar performance scores from both sites.

The start page for WebXPRT 4 Singapore, with the default Simplified Chinese UI

We hope that the WebXPRT mirror host site in Singapore will make it easier for people in East Asia to use the benchmark. Do you find the site useful? If so, we’d love to hear from you! Also, if you encounter any unexpected issues or interruptions while testing, please let us know!

Justin

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

Celebrating 10 years of WebXPRT!

We’re excited to announce that it’s been 10 years since the initial launch of WebXPRT! In early 2013, we introduced WebXPRT as a unique browser performance benchmark in a market space that was already crowded with a variety of specialized measurement tools. Our goal was to offer a benchmark that could compare the performance of almost any web-enabled device, using scenarios created to mirror real-world tasks. We wanted it to be a free, easily accessible, easy-to-run, useful, and appealing testing option for OEM labs, vendors, and the tech press.

When we look back on the last 10 years of WebXPRT, we can’t help but conclude that our efforts have been successful. Since those early days, the WebXPRT market presence has grown from humble beginnings into a worldwide industry standard. Hundreds of tech press publications have used WebXPRT in thousands of articles and reviews, and testers have now run the benchmark well over 1.1 million times.

Below, I’ve listed some of the WebXPRT team’s accomplishments over the last decade. If you’ve been following WebXPRT from the beginning, this may all be familiar, but if you’re new to the  community, it may be interesting to see some of the steps that contributed to making WebXPRT what it is today.

In future blog posts, we’ll look at how the number of WebXPRT runs has grown over time, and how WebXPRT use has grown among OEMs, vendors, and the tech press worldwide. Do you have any thoughts that you’d like to share from your WebXPRT testing experience? If so, let us know!

Justin

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