Category: Chrome OS

Today is the day!

on December 18, 2014

We release CrXPRT 2015 to the public later today. Many thanks to all the community members who’ve used the community previews for all their help. CrXPRT will be available in the Chrome Web Store, but for now, it will not be available as a direct download from the CrXPRT page. We’re looking into ways to host a direct download on our site, and hope to have a solution after the first of the year. If you’re having problems getting CrXPRT from the store, the community previews will still be available in the members’ area.

If you are new to testing in a Chrome environment, be aware of some things. One is that a Chromebook will check for updates every time it reboots. If you’re running multiple tests, be sure to not reboot the system, or it may upgrade the operating system between your tests.

For those testing multiple devices, it’s a good idea to use a separate account for each device. If you have multiple Chromebooks logged into the same account, Chrome OS will sync all devices. This could be useful in some circumstances, but it could be a problem at other times.

We are very excited about the release. Let us know what you think!

Eric

Comment on this post in the forums

Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, Chrome OS, Chromebooks, 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

Comment on this post in the forums

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

Comment on this post in the forums

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

A new model

By Eric Hale

on November 20, 2014

Today we released a new community preview for CrXPRT (CP2). It contains several enhancements and UI changes. It also fixes the problem we discussed in last week’s blog, so CP2 will now correctly execute a rundown test on a system using Chinese language settings.

The most exciting enhancement is that CP2 will let you test battery life without having to put the device into developer mode. The new Battery Status API, which became available with Chrome 38, makes this possible.

Another enhancement is that results submission is now integrated into the benchmark UI. CrXPRT follows the WebXPRT model, with you having opt-in control over whether the results are published on the PT Web site. However, CrXPRT goes further by allowing you the option to upload more extensive disclosure information, and the option to download results as a text file.

These and other enhancements are covered in more detail in the CrXPRT forum and the user manual. Because this is a community preview, you have to be a community member to download it. However, joining is very easy.

We hope you like the new features in CrXPRT. Let us know what you think!

Eric

Discuss CrXPRT CP2 in the forums

Posted in Chrome OS, Collaborative benchmark development, Community Preview, CrXPRT |

The value of diversity

By Eric Hale

on November 13, 2014

It’s great to hear from community members who are using the XPRTs. Having a pool of users with diverse viewpoints is critical for successful software development. While we try very hard to find problems, there will always be cases we miss.

For example, we talked recently about the challenges of working in a multilingual world. Just this week, Acer reported an interesting bug in the CrXPRT community preview. If your language is set to Chinese, the battery test will estimate the battery life as expected. However, a rundown test will return the message “Cannot calculate total run time.” This does not happen when the language is set to English.

We have verified this problem. In the next week or so, we’ll be releasing a second community preview containing a fix for this and a few other issues.

We’ve talked before about the difficulties of maintaining software in a fast moving world. Late last week, we received a new Nexus 9. It encountered a problem during the MobileXPRT tests, so we fixed the problem and will be releasing a patched build tomorrow.

Don’t forget, as we said last week, we’ll be releasing the WebXPRT 2015 design overview tomorrow. We are looking forward to the feedback from all our community members.

Eric

Comment on this post in the forums

Posted in Android, Chrome OS, CrXPRT, MobileXPRT, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2015 |

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

Comment on this post in the forums

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

Category: Chrome OS

Today is the day!

Timing is everything

A very good question

A new model

The value of diversity

CrXPRT is here!

Check out the other XPRTs: