Category: Performance benchmarking

Hoping for a perfect 10

on June 18, 2015

As many of you know by now, the release date for Windows 10 is July 29. As we’ve said before, we are hard at work getting TouchXPRT ready for Windows 10. We’ve succeeded in building TouchXPRT as a universal app, and it’s now running on Windows 10. We haven’t successfully run it on Windows 10 Phone yet, but we’re working on that.

Unfortunately, I can’t share any performance data. The EULA for the current build of Windows 10 (build 10143 as I’m writing this) forbids publishing benchmark results without prior written approval from Microsoft.

We’ll continue testing and refining the porting of TouchXPRT to Windows 10. Our goal is to release it as a universal app to the community in July.

What are your experiences testing Windows 10? We’d love to hear about them!

Eric

Posted in Performance benchmarking, TouchXPRT, TouchXPRT development process, TouchXPRT release cycle, Windows 10 |

WebXPRT 2015 is here!

By Eric Hale

on May 8, 2015

Today, we’re releasing WebXPRT 2015, our benchmark for evaluating the performance of Web-enabled devices. The BenchmarkXPRT Development Community has been using a community preview for several weeks, but now that we’ve released the benchmark, anyone can run WebXPRT and publish results.

Run WebXPRT 2015

WebXPRT 2013 is still available here while people transition to WebXPRT 2015. We will provide plenty of notice before discontinuing WebXPRT 2013.

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

Posted in Automation, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Performance benchmarking, Performance of computing devices, Performance testing on tablets, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2015 |

More power, more control

By Eric Hale

on March 19, 2015

As I said last week, the community preview for WebXPRT 2015 is coming up soon. One of the changes that will be exciting to anyone who does a lot of testing is that we made it simpler to automate WebXPRT tests.

WebXPRT 2015 will let you automatically select any set of tests you want to run. However, as always, you must run the entire suite of tests to get an overall score. Although the community preview will not include any experimental tests, the automation includes control for those future tests as well.

You may choose from several output formats: HTML table, XML, and CSV, or you can download the results as a text file.

Using the automation is simple: you just append the desired test parameters to the end of the URL. The format allows you to mix and match a lot of options, while still being very concise. The details will be in the release notes.

As people who test a lot of devices, we are very excited about this new capability.

Eric

Posted in Automation, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Community Preview, Future of performance evaluation, Performance benchmarking, WebXPRT, What makes a good benchmark? |

An updated MobileXPRT 2013 build is available

By Eric Hale

on February 20, 2015

Today we’re releasing a new build of MobileXPRT 2013 (b93) at MobileXPRT.com and the Google Play store. The build fixes a problem reported by a reviewer testing the LG G3. The device was going to sleep during the performance test, and causing MobileXPRT to crash after waking up. We’ve seen this problem only on the LG G3, but it may occur on other devices as well.

The new MobileXPRT build keeps the screen active during the run. Scores from this build are comparable with previous MobileXPRT scores.

Click here to download the new MobileXPRT installer (250 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 MobileXPRT APK (10.3 MB) directly from our site.

Download the updated MobileXPRT UX Tests APK (7.6 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.

Posted in Android, BenchmarkXPRT development community, MobileXPRT, Performance benchmarking, Performance testing on tablets |

Upcoming experiments

By Eric Hale

on November 6, 2014

Next week, we’ll be releasing the design overview for WebXPRT 2015. WebXPRT 2013 has been an enormous success, having been run tens of thousands of times.

One of the big improvements we are considering for WebXPRT 2015 is adding experimental tests. A big reason for WebXPRT’s success is that it runs on almost every Web-enabled device. We consider it essential to preserve this broad compatibility. However, there are interesting Web technologies that simply are not available on all devices.

Our proposal is to add experimental tests to WebXPRT. These tests would be optional and would not be included in the Overall score, so WebXPRT would still be able to compare the performance of widely different devices. We are looking at technologies such as Web Workers, WebGL, and pre-compiled JavaScript (asm.js).

In addition to adding experimental tests, we are looking at ways to improve the UI, add automation, add new tests, update old tests, and more!

If you are a community member, you’ll get a notice when the overview is available. We will definitely want to know what you think! If you are not a member, it’s a great time to join.

If you have any thoughts on these ideas, or have ideas of your own, please let us know!

Eric

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Performance benchmarking, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2015, What makes a good benchmark? |

CrXPRT is here!

By Eric Hale

on October 15, 2014

Today we are releasing the CrXPRT 2014 Community Preview (CP1). As mentioned in a previous post, CrXPRT contains performance and battery life tests. The performance suite includes five scenarios utilizing Web browsing and JavaScript workloads, plus Portable Native Client (PNaCl) and WebGL-based scenarios. The battery life test incorporates all of the performance workloads and adds video playback, audio playback, and HTML5 gaming scenarios.

The battery life test in CP1 builds on the lessons we learned from developing BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android. In fact, we’ve been able to improve on the testing time. BatteryXPRT 2014 requires 5.5 hours to estimate battery life; CP1 can estimate battery life in only 3.5 hours. The battery test in CP1 still requires the device be put in developer mode, so we’re investigating the new Chrome OS battery status APIs. We hope these will make it possible to remove this restriction in a future release.

The estimates for battery life are generally pretty accurate. However, we have seen runs where the battery life results were much higher than expected. We are continuing to investigate this. If you see an anomalous result, please let us know. It is worth noting that the performance scores have been very consistent.

Because this is a community preview, you have to be a community member to download it. However, joining is very easy.

Check out the new CrXPRT, and let us know what you think!

Eric

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Posted in Battery life, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Chrome OS, Community Preview, CrXPRT, Performance benchmarking |

Category: Performance benchmarking

Hoping for a perfect 10

WebXPRT 2015 is here!

More power, more control

An updated MobileXPRT 2013 build is available

Upcoming experiments

CrXPRT is here!

Check out the other XPRTs: