Author Archives: Justin Greene

CrXPRT’s future

on January 19, 2017

This week, we’re continuing our review of the XPRT portfolio by discussing the future of CrXPRT. CrXPRT, designed for use with Chrome OS, is a tool for evaluating the performance and battery life of Chromebooks as they handle everyday tasks. The app’s performance test, which measures Chromebook speed, produces an overall score and individual scores for each workload. The battery life test produces an estimated battery life and a separate performance score. CrXPRT is easy to install and use, and like BatteryXPRT, it evaluates battery life in half a workday.

We developed CrXPRT in response to the growing popularity of Chromebooks, especially in the education sector. The number of OEMs manufacturing Chromebooks has grown dramatically, along with the range of Chromebook price points and form factors. That growth shows no signs of slowing down, so CrXPRT is more relevant than ever as a tool for helping consumers make informed buying decisions.

As Chromebook market share continues to grow, however, it’s clear that significant changes to the Chrome OS environment are on the way. One big change is Google’s decision to bring Android apps, and the Google Play store itself, to Chrome OS. Another change is the plan to “begin the evolution away” from the Chrome apps platform and phase out Chrome app support on other platforms within the next two years.

There are also reports of a hybrid Android-Chrome OS operating system. Codenamed “Andromeda,” it would unite the Android and Chrome OS environments in a manner similar to the way Microsoft Continuum allows Windows 10 to run on a wide variety of device types. Details on Andromeda are few and far between, but it would obviously be a game changer.

The Google Play store rollout to select Chromebooks is already well underway. As for the other changes, it remains to be seen exactly when and how they will be implemented. The Chromium team did state that all types of Chrome apps will remain supported and maintained on Chrome OS for the foreseeable future.

For us, it’s important to maintain the ability to measure both performance and battery life on Chromebooks. The current version of CrXPRT does the job well, so we don’t see a need for a new version until the situation becomes more clear. In the meantime, we’ll be keeping an eye on Chrome-related news.

As always, we’re interested in your feedback. If you have any thoughts on CrXPRT 2015 or the future of Chromebook evaluation, let us know!

Justin

Posted in Android, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Chrome OS, Chromebooks, CrXPRT, Performance benchmarking, Windows 10 |

Reflecting on 2016

By Justin Greene

on January 12, 2017

The beginning of a new year is a good time to look back on the previous 12 months and take stock of everything that happened. Here’s a quick recap of a very busy year:

In 2016, the XPRTs travelled quite a bit. Eric went to CES in Las Vegas, Mark attended MWC in Barcelona, and Bill flew out to IDF16 in Shenzhen.

We also sent a team to Seattle for the first XPRT Women Code-A-Thon, an event we’re very proud to have sponsored and co-hosted along with ChickTech, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing the number of women in tech-related fields. The Code-a-thon also served as inspiration for an eight-part video series entitled Women Coding for Change. The series explains the motivation behind the Code-a-thon and profiles several of the participants. If you haven’t watched the videos, check them out. They’re well worth the time.

Speaking of videos, we also published one about Nebula Wolf, the mini-game workload produced through our first collaboration with the North Carolina State Senior Design Center. That experience was promising enough for us to partner with another student team this past fall, which resulted in a virtual reality app that we hope to share with the community in the near future.

Of course, we also continued work on our suite of benchmark tools and related resources. We released TouchXPRT 2016 to the public, published the Exploring TouchXPRT 2016 white paper, and released the TouchXPRT 2016 source code to community members.

In 2016, we unveiled the XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight, a new way for device vendors and manufacturers to share verified test results with buyers around the world. We put 46 devices in the spotlight throughout the year and published Back-to-School, Black Friday, and Holiday device showcases.

In the last quarter of 2016, we celebrated our most widely-used benchmark, WebXPRT, passing the 100,000-run milestone. WebXPRT is still going strong and is as useful and relevant as ever!

Finally, we ended the year with the exciting news that we’re moving forward with efforts to develop a machine-learning performance evaluation tool. We look forward to engaging with the community in the coming year as we tackle this challenge!

As always, we’re grateful for everyone who’s helped to make the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community a strong, vibrant, and relevant resource for people all around the world. Here’s to a great 2017!

Justin

Posted in CES, ChickTech Seattle, IDF, Machine learning, Mobile World Congress, Nebula Wolf, North Carolina State University, Source code, TouchXPRT 2016, Trade Shows, Video, Virtual reality, White papers, Women Coding for Change, Women in STEM, XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight, XPRT Women Code-a-Thon |

BatteryXPRT’s future

By Justin Greene

on December 1, 2016

A few weeks ago, we discussed the future of HDXPRT. This week, we’re focusing on the current state of BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, and how the benchmark may evolve in 2017.

BatteryXPRT continues to provide users with reliable evaluations of their Android device’s performance and battery life under real-world conditions. Originally designed to be compatible with Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) and above, the benchmark continues to work well on subsequent versions of Android, up to and including Android 6.0 (Marshmallow).

Since Android 7 (Nougat) began to roll out on select devices in the past few months, our internal testing has shown that we’ll need to adjust the BatteryXPRT source code to maintain compatibility with devices running Android 7 and above. We developed the existing source when Eclipse was the officially supported SDK environment, and now we need to bring the code in line with the current Android Studio SDK.

Practically speaking, BatteryXPRT does run on Nougat, and to the best of our knowledge, battery life results are still accurate and reliable. However, the test will not produce a performance score. As more Nougat devices are released in the coming months, it’s possible that other aspects of the benchmark may encounter issues. If this happens during your testing, we encourage you to let us know.

Because MobileXPRT 2015 and BatteryXPRT 2014 performance workloads are so closely related, the next obvious question is whether MobileXPRT 2015 runs on Nougat devices. As of now, MobileXPRT 2015 does run successfully and reliably on Android 7, and this is because the most recent build of MobileXPRT 2015 was compiled using a newer SDK.

We think the best course of action for MobileXPRT 2015 and BatteryXPRT will be to eventually combine them into a single, easy-to-use Android benchmark for performance and battery life. We’ll talk more about that plan in the coming months, and we look forward to hearing your input. Until that transition is successful, we’ll continue to support both BatteryXPRT and MobileXPRT 2015.

As always, we welcome your feedback on these developments, as well as any ideas you may have for future XPRTs.

Justin

Posted in Android, Android L, Android M, Android N, Battery life, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Collaborative benchmark development, MobileXPRT 2015 |

Tracking device evolution with WebXPRT ’15, part 2

By Justin Greene

on October 27, 2016

Last week, we used the Apple iPhone as a test case to show how hardware advances are often reflected in benchmark scores over time. When we compared WebXPRT 2015 scores for various iPhone models, we saw a clear trend of progressively higher scores as we moved from phones with an A7 chip to phones with A8, A9, and A10 Fusion chips. Performance increases over time are not surprising, but WebXPRT ’15 scores also showed us that upgrading from an iPhone 6 to an iPhone 6s is likely to have a much greater impact on web-browsing performance than upgrading from an iPhone 6s to an iPhone 7.

This week, we’re revisiting our iPhone test case to see how software updates can boost device performance without any changes in hardware. The original WebXPRT ’15 tests for the iPhone 5s ran on iOS 8.3, and the original tests for the iPhone 6s, 6s Plus, and SE ran on variants of iOS 9. We updated each phone to iOS 10.0.2 and ran several iterations of WebXPRT ’15.

Upgrading from iOS 8.3 to iOS 10 on the iPhone 5s caused a 17% increase in web-browsing performance, as measured by WebXPRT. Upgrading from iOS 9 to iOS 10 on the iPhone 6s, 6s Plus, and SE produced web-browsing performance gains of 2.6%, 3.6%, and 3.1%, respectively.

The chart below shows the WebXPRT ’15 scores for a range of iPhones, with each iPhone’s iOS version upgrade noted in parentheses. The dark blue columns on the left represent the original scores, and the light blue columns on the right represent the upgrade scores.

As with our hardware comparison last week, these scores are the median of a range of scores for each device in our database. These scores come both from our own testing and from device reviews from popular tech media outlets.

These results reinforce a message that we repeat often, that many factors other than hardware influence performance. Designing benchmarks that deliver relevant and reliable scores requires taking all factors into account.

What insights have you gained recently from WebXPRT ’15 testing? Let us know!

Justin

Posted in Apple, Application-based benchmarks, Benchmark metrics, Benchmarking, Browser-based benchmarks, iOS, Performance benchmarking, Uncategorized, WebXPRT |

Tracking device evolution with WebXPRT ‘15

By Justin Greene

on October 20, 2016

The XPRT Spotlight on the Apple iPhone 7 Plus gives us a great opportunity to look at the progression of WebXPRT 2015 scores for the iPhone line and see how hardware and software advances are often reflected in benchmark scores over time. This week, we’ll see how the evolution of Apple’s mobile CPU architecture has boosted web-browsing performance. In a future post, we’ll see the impact of iOS development.

As we’ve discussed in the past, multiple factors can influence benchmark results. While we’re currently using the iPhone as a test case, the same principles apply to all types of devices. We should also note that WebXPRT is an excellent gauge of expected web-browsing performance during real-world tasks, which is different than pure CPU performance in isolation.

When looking at WebXPRT ’15 scores in our database, we see that iPhone web-browsing performance has more than doubled in the last three years. In 2013, an iPhone 5s with an Apple A7 chip earned an overall WebXPRT ’15 score of 100. Today, a new iPhone 7 Plus with an A10 Fusion chip reports a score somewhere close to 210. The chart below shows the WebXPRT ’15 scores for a range of iPhones, with each iPhone’s CPU noted in parentheses.

Moving forward from the A7 chip in the iPhone 5s to the A8 chip in the iPhone 6 and the A9 chip in the iPhone 6s and SE, we see consistent score increases. The biggest jump, at over 48%, appears in the transition from the A8 to the A9 chip, implying that folks upgrading from an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus to anything newer would notice a huge difference in web performance.

In general, folks upgrading from an A9-based phone (6S, 6S Plus, or SE) to an A10-based phone (7 and 7 Plus) could expect an increase in web performance of over 6.5%.

The scores we list represent the median of a range of scores for each device in our database. These scores come from our own testing, as well as from device reviews from media outlets such as AnandTech, Notebookcheck, and Tom’s Hardware. It’s worth noting that the highest A9 score in our database (AnandTech’s iPhone SE score of 205) overlaps with the lowest A10 Fusion score (Tom’s Hardware of Germany’s iPhone 7 score of 203), so while the improvement in median scores is clear, performance will vary according to individual phones and other factors.

Soon, we’ll revisit our iPhone test case to see how software updates can boost device performance without any changes in hardware. For more details on the newest iPhones, visit the Spotlight comparison page to see how iPhone 7 and 7 Plus specs and WebXPRT scores stack up.

Justin

Posted in Apple, Benchmark metrics, Benchmarking, Performance benchmarking, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2015 |

An exciting milestone for WebXPRT!

By Justin Greene

on October 5, 2016

If you’re familiar with the run counter on WebXPRT.com, you may have noticed that WebXPRT recently passed a pretty significant milestone. Since we released WebXPRT 2013, users running WebXPRT 2013 and 2015 have successfully completed over 100,000 runs!

We’re thrilled about WebXPRT’s ongoing popularity, and we think that it’s due to the benchmark’s unique combination of characteristics: it’s easy to run, it runs quickly and on a wide variety of platforms, and it evaluates device performance using real-world tasks. Manufacturers, developers, consumers, and media outlets in more than 358 cities, from Aberdeen to Zevenaar, and 57 countries, from Argentina to Vietnam, have used WebXPRT’s easy-to-understand results to compare how well devices handle everyday tasks. WebXPRT has definitely earned its reputation as a “go-to” benchmark.

If you haven’t run WebXPRT yet, give it a try. The test is free and runs in almost any browser.

We’re grateful for everyone who’s helped us reach this milestone. Here’s to another 100,000 runs!

Justin

Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2013, WebXPRT 2015, What makes a good benchmark? |

Author Archives: Justin Greene

CrXPRT’s future

Reflecting on 2016

BatteryXPRT’s future

Tracking device evolution with WebXPRT ’15, part 2

Tracking device evolution with WebXPRT ‘15

An exciting milestone for WebXPRT!

Check out the other XPRTs: