Category: Chrome OS

News from the factory floor

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 |

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 |

What do you think when you hear “Chromebook”?

By Justin Greene

on September 11, 2014

We’ve been thinking a lot about Chromebooks while doing all of our testing in preparation for the CrXPRT Community Preview. In both the models we’re testing and the ones announced in the press, we’ve seen just how much the Chromebook market is changing. Some folks even claim that Chromebook sales made up 35 percent of US commercial laptop sales in the first half of 2014. What’s even more interesting to us is the wide variety of Chromebooks on the market.

Choosing between Chromebooks these days is becoming more complicated than it used to be. There’s a greater range of hardware choices, and those choices can have a direct impact on performance and battery life. Some Chromebooks offer local storage up to 320 GB, touch screens, and 4G/LTE connectivity. Prices range widely, from $199 to $1,499. Even seemingly comparable systems can perform much differently when put to the test. For instance, we recently tested two Chromebooks separated by only $50 in price, but over 5 hours of estimated battery life!

Whether a consumer’s ultimate purchasing decision is based on price, specs, or a combination of factors, there are few things more valuable to buyers than reliable facts about performance and battery life. Benchmarking is ultimately about gaining useful data for decision making, and that’s why we’re excited about the value that CrXPRT will bring to the Chromebook discussion!

Justin

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Posted in Chrome OS, CrXPRT, Google Chrome, Performance of computing devices, What makes a good benchmark? |

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 |

More details to come

By Eric Hale

on July 10, 2014

As we’ve been saying the past couple of months, we’re working on a benchmark for Chrome OS. The experimentation phase is winding down, and we are starting to shape the code into a useable benchmark. The design plan will leverage existing WebXPRT tests, of course. However, we’ve gone far beyond that. The benchmark will include video playback, 3D modeling via WebGL, and even an HTML5 game. The test also uses Chrome OS’ native execution capability. The benchmark will actually use the Portable Native Client (PNaCl), as PNaCl is the recommended tool chain for native client. It also gives the benchmark the ability to run on more platforms.

As we mentioned before, we’re including a battery test as part of the new benchmark. So far, we haven’t found a way to remove the requirement to put the device in developer mode for the battery test.

Next week, we’ll publish a design document for the community to review. As always, the design document is based on the comments and suggestions we received combined with our own research and experimentation.

Eric

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Posted in Chrome OS, Future of performance evaluation, HTML5, Performance benchmarking, WebXPRT |

In the works

By Eric Hale

on June 26, 2014

A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned stability issues with BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android when running on systems with only 1 GB of RAM. After some restructuring, we now have a build that’s stable on those devices. We’re finishing testing, and it’s looking good. We’ll be making the new build available at BatteryXPRT.com and in the Google Play store early next week. 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.

Speaking of BatteryXPRT, we have something special coming soon. I can’t say what it is yet, but we haven’t done anything like it before.

We’re also getting closer to a general release for HDXPRT 2014. As we’ve explained before, the new HDXPRT runs three iterations in less than 2 hours, and will be downloadable, so the entire installation and testing process is much quicker than before. We’re currently working out a few kinks, but we expect the general release very soon.

Also, we’re still accepting ideas for naming the Chrome-related XPRT now in development. Share your ideas at BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

Eric

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Posted in BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Chrome OS, Collaborative benchmark development, HDXPRT 2014 |

Category: Chrome OS

News from the factory floor

Willkommen, 欢迎, welcome

What do you think when you hear “Chromebook”?

An XPRT training course

More details to come

In the works

Check out the other XPRTs: