I think that an important part of any touch benchmark will be a Web component. After all, the always (or almost always) connected nature ofthese devices is a critical part of their identities. I think such a Web benchmark needs to include a measurement of page load speed (how long it takes to download and render a page).
Creating such a test seems straightforward. Pick a set of sites, such as the five or ten most popular, and then time how long the home page of each takes to load. The problem, however, is that those pages are constantly changing. Every few months, most popular sites do a major redesign. That would obviously affect the results for a test and make it difficult to compare the results of a current test to one from a few months back. It is even more of a problem that the page will be different for one user than another as sites typically know things like where you are and what your computer is and adjust things to match those characteristics. And, the ads and the content of the site are constantly changing and updating. Even hitting Refresh on a page can give you different page.
Given all of those problems, how is it possible to test page loads? One way is to create pages that are similar those of leading Web sites in terms of things like size, amount of graphics, and dynamic elements. This allows the tests to be consistent over time and from different devices and locations. (Or, at least, as consistent as the variability of the Internet from moment to moment allows.) The problem with this approach, however, is that the pages will age out as Web sites update themselves and they will not be the real sites.
Such are the tradeoffs in benchmarking. The key is how to balance real science with real world considerations. What do you think? Which approach is the better balance of real science and real world?
Bill
into a cycling computer. Because it measures wind speed, it actually is more capable than any existing bike computer—it uses data you supply like your type of bike and your weight, GPS info and knowledge of the terrain, and readings on wind speed and your heart rate to calculate your power output. If it works reliably, it would provide data that normally requires a cycle power meter costing a couple thousand dollars. If you are not into cycling, you probably don’t care, but it does show how our phones are becoming the gathering point for a myriad of data sources around us. I definitely need to try one of these out when they become available in March.
