Category: Benchmarking

So easy a child can do it!

on January 15, 2015

Tomorrow we are releasing a new video featuring CrXPRT. This one is set in a school science fair, where “Ellie Smith” explains how she used CrXPRT to help her school decide which Chromebook to buy. We were lucky enough to get a thoroughly professional and charming young actress to play the role of Ellie. (I have a tiny cameo as the guy in the gray sport coat at the back of the room.)

Before we started shooting the video, we asked an actual 10-year-old to install and run CrXPRT. I hate to sound like an old commercial, but it really was so simple that a child could do it!

We also created a faux science report to go with the video. An adult—not a sixth-grader—wrote the report, but the results in it and in the video are real. (You can follow the links in the science report to see the real-world results online.)

When it goes live, you’ll find the video and the report on CrXPRT.com, as well as on YouTube and SlideShare. We hope you’ll enjoy seeing Ellie’s project!

Eric

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT, Chrome OS, Chromebooks, CrXPRT, Google Chrome, Video, What makes a good benchmark? |

CrXPRT 2015 is here!

By Eric Hale

on December 18, 2014

Today, we’re releasing CrXPRT 2015, our benchmark for evaluating the performance and battery life of Chrome OS devices. The BenchmarkXPRT Development Community has been using community previews for several weeks, but now that we’ve released the benchmark, anyone can download CrXPRT and publish results.

Download CrXPRT 2015 from the Chrome Web Store

You can read more about CrXPRT in the CrXPRT 2015 User Manual located here. The User Manual also explains how to configure your device for testing and discusses the options that are available to you.

After trying out CrXPRT, please send your comments to BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

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Posted in Chrome OS, Chromebooks, Collaborative benchmark development, CrXPRT |

Timing is everything

By Eric Hale

on December 11, 2014

We have a couple instances of interesting timing this week.

A few weeks ago, we released the second community preview for CrXPRT (CP2). It’s been doing very well and we’re planning to release CrXPRT to the public next week. Many thanks to all the community members who have helped make this possible.

Because the release is so close to the end of the year, the general release will be CrXPRT 2015. However, the community previews were dated 2014, which is potentially confusing. We want to reassure you that the results will still be comparable. As we discussed last week, for any of the XPRT benchmarks, the results from the community previews are always comparable to those from the final release.

In other news, we fixed the intermittent problem BatteryXPRT was having on the Nexus 9. The tests are looking good. In a bit of really good timing, this week Google started rolling out Android 5.01. We will be going back and retesting the devices with the newer version of the OS. We don’t expect any new problems, but it’s very nice that we got to check it out before we released the patch.

Eric

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Posted in Android, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Chrome OS, Community Preview, CrXPRT |

A very good question

By Eric Hale

on December 4, 2014

A couple of weeks ago, we released the second community preview of CrXPRT (CP2). One of the changes was to make CrXPRT handle its test results more like WebXPRT. It now automatically uploads some test data to the PT servers, so that we can use it to improve future versions of the benchmark. Like WebXPRT, no personally identifying information is collected, and the results are never made public without your permission.

This week we got a question about the new results collection in CP2. The member wanted to know if the uploading of the results affected the battery life score at all. It does not. The results collection happens after the test. If you’re doing a battery rundown test, the results aren’t uploaded until the device boots the next time. I’m sorry we didn’t make that clearer in the documentation.

When we release a community preview, we commit that the results from that preview will be comparable to any subsequent previews and to the general release. In the case of CP2, we compared the results from CP2 to those from CP1 to make sure that the results stayed comparable. We take this commitment very seriously. When you test with a community preview, you can be sure that the results will still be good when the general release comes out.

In other news, we released a patch for BatteryXPRT yesterday. As we explained in the last blog post, this new version of BatteryXPRT is much more stable on devices running Android 5.

Have any other good questions? Send them our way.

Eric

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Posted in Android, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Chrome OS, Collaborative benchmark development, Community Preview, CrXPRT, WebXPRT |

An updated BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android build is available

By Eric Hale

on December 3, 2014

Today we’re releasing a new build of BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android (v101) at BatteryXPRT.com and the Google Play store. This build addresses issues we saw with the Create Slideshow Workload when testing on Android 5 devices. The tests have not changed, so new scores are comparable with previous BatteryXPRT scores.

Although the patch works on the majority of Android 5 devices, we are continuing to investigate intermittent failures on the Nexus 9. Please see the Monday’s blog post, for details.

Click here to download the new BatteryXPRT installer (317 MB) directly from our site.

For users who have limited bandwidth or trouble accessing the Google Play store, downloading the APK files (16.9 MB total) may make installation easier.

Download the updated BatteryXPRT APK (2.7 MB) directly from our site.

Download the updated BatteryXPRT Tests APK (14.2 MB) directly from our site.

If you have any questions about the update or any other XPRT-related topic, feel free to contact us at BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

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Posted in Android, Battery life, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, BenchmarkXPRT |

An update for BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android

By Eric Hale

on December 1, 2014

For those of you in the US, I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving.

A couple of weeks ago, we updated MobileXPRT so that it would run correctly on Android 5 (Android L) devices. Later this week, we will be updating BatteryXPRT as well. The current BatteryXPRT build doesn’t work with Android 5 due to failures of the Create Slideshow workload. This is the same workload failure we fixed with an updated MobileXPRT build.

The new build greatly improves things. We successfully tested the new build on an array of Android 5 and 4.4 devices with no failures. However, we have seen the new build of BatteryXPRT return intermittent errors during the Create Photo Collage and Apply Photo Effects workloads when testing on the Nexus 9.

Because the error on the Nexus 9 is intermittent, it’s possible to get results from some runs. These results are still valid.

We haven’t seen this failure on any device other than the Nexus 9, but cannot guarantee that there aren’t others. If you see any other failures, or have any questions, please contact us.

We’re currently working on a solution for this problem. We will, as always, keep you informed.

Eric

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Posted in Android, Battery life, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Collaborative benchmark development, MobileXPRT |

Category: Benchmarking

So easy a child can do it!

CrXPRT 2015 is here!

Timing is everything

A very good question

An updated BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android build is available

An update for BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android

Check out the other XPRTs: