Category: BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android

Getting the most from the XPRTs

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 |

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 |

Activity all around

By Justin Greene

on October 2, 2014

It’s a busy time in XPRT land, and we wanted to share some news about upcoming events.

The first bit is an update about the CrXPRT 2014 Community Preview. We’ve been busy refining the benchmark, and feel like the current candidate build under test is likely to ship as our Community Preview. We’ll publish more details about the app and its workloads soon, but don’t be surprised to see a Community Preview announcement in the near future.

In Patching and future proofing, we discussed two potential problems while running MobileXPRT 2013 on some versions of Android 4.4 and the developer’s preview of Android L. The first problem involves the benchmark not showing scores when running on a Nexus 5 with the ART runtime enabled. The second problem was a failure of the Create Slideshow workload on Android L. In order to address the underlying cause of both problems, we’ll soon be issuing a patched MobileXPRT 2013 build. We’re still wrapping up our testing, but expect to release the patch at some point next week.

We’ll also be posting BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android APKs directly on the BatteryXPRT.com site. For users who have low bandwidth or trouble accessing the Google Play store, these APKs will 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.

Justin

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Posted in Android, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Community Preview, CrXPRT, MobileXPRT |

Willkommen, 欢迎, welcome

By Eric Hale

on September 25, 2014

I was lucky enough to see the Broadway revival of Cabaret recently. Famously, the show’s opening song reflects the multilingual reality of Europe, requiring the character of the MC to constantly switch between German, French, and English.

That is increasingly our reality as well, although I’m thinking the MC had it easy. As the popularity of the XPRTs grow, we see their use in more languages around the world. I routinely see German, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Italian, Korean, and more. MobileXPRT is available on the ZOL app store in China, and, as I’m writing this, it’s been downloaded over 800 times!

We’re taking steps toward reflecting our own multilingual reality. For example, BatteryXPRT 2014 released with a Simplified Chinese UI. However, we have a long way to go before we can dance from one language to another.

Right now, CrXPRT only has an English UI. We would love it to have a Chinese UI before it goes community preview. More UIs would be even better! This is where having a large and diverse community is a great asset. If there’s a language you’d like to see supported, let us know. If you have the skills to help, we’d love to hear from you!

Eric

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Posted in BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Chinese, Chrome OS, CrXPRT, MobileXPRT |

An XPRT training course

By Eric Hale

on July 17, 2014

We have a couple of exciting announcements today! A few weeks ago, we promised something special for BatteryXPRT, and we can now show off the all new BatteryXPRT training course. The BatteryXPRT training course is an online, interactive, multi-media tool designed to make learning about the benchmark easy and enjoyable.

You can easily navigate to detailed videos and graphics explaining how to build the benchmark from source code, how to configure your device, how results are calculated, and much more. It’s like the BatteryXPRT design document, white paper, and user manual have come to life!

In addition to following the link above, you can also find the course at BatteryXPRT.com. The course works on most popular browsers in Windows and OSX.

In other news, we have a name for the Chrome benchmark, CrXPRT. Thanks for all the suggestions, and let us know what you think of the name.

As promised last week, the CrXPRT Design Document is available to the development community today. You’ll find it on the CrXPRT tab in the members’ area. If you’re not yet a member, we’d love for you to join here.

If you have any questions about CrXPRT of feedback on the BatteryXPRT course, feel free to contact us at BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

Eric

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Posted in BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Chrome OS, Collaborative benchmark development, Video |

The updated BatteryXPRT is here

By Eric Hale

on June 30, 2014

As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we discovered stability issues when running BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android on devices with only 1 GB of RAM. We now have a build that’s stable on those devices. Battery life and performance results from the new build are equivalent to those from the previous build, so your existing results are still valid and comparable.

You can download the new build of BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android at BatteryXPRT.com or through the Google Play Store. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Eric

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Posted in Android, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android |

Category: BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android

Getting the most from the XPRTs

News from the factory floor

Activity all around

Willkommen, 欢迎, welcome

An XPRT training course

The updated BatteryXPRT is here

Check out the other XPRTs: