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The busiest year ever!

Eric Hale
By Eric Hale
on December 25, 2014

As 2014 winds down, it’s a good time to look back at the year. And what a year it has been! This is the year that the XPRTs really went global. The benchmarks are in wider use than ever. The community continues to grow.

Here are a few of the big things that happened this year:

 

It’s going to be hard to top this year, but we are certainly going to try! There’s another video coming soon. We’re already working on WebXPRT 2015. (If you haven’t commented on the WebXPRT 2015 design document yet, it’s not too late.) We’re making plans for MWC 2015. And there’s a lot more in the works!

Whatever your traditions are, we hope you have a wonderful holiday season. See you in 2015.

Eric

Posted in Android, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, BenchmarkXPRT development community, CES, CrXPRT, HDXPRT, Mobile World Congress, TouchXPRT 2014, WebXPRT 2015 |

CrXPRT 2015 is here!

Eric Hale
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 |

Today is the day!

Eric Hale
By Eric Hale
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

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, Chrome OS, Chromebooks, CrXPRT |

Timing is everything

Eric Hale
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

Eric Hale
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 |

A new model

Eric Hale
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 |

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