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Category: Mobile devices

Principled Technologies and the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community release MobileXPRT 3, a free performance evaluation app for Android devices

Durham, NC, February 1— Principled Technologies and the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community have released MobileXPRT 3, a free app that gives objective information about how well a tablet, smartphone, or any other Android device handles common tasks. Anyone can go to MobileXPRT.com to compare existing performance results on a variety of devices, and to download the app for themselves. MobileXPRT 3 is also available in the Google Play Store.

MobileXPRT 3 is a benchmark that evaluates the capabilities of Android devices by running six performance scenarios (Apply Photo Effects, Create Photo Collages, Create Slideshow, Encrypt Personal Content, Detect Faces to Organize Photos, and Scan Receipts for Spreadsheet). It also provides an overall measure by generating a single performance score. “MobileXPRT is a popular, easy-to-use benchmark run by manufacturers, tech journalists, and consumers all around the world,” said Bill Catchings, co-founder of Principled Technologies, which administers the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community. “We believe that MobileXPRT 3 is a great addition to MobileXPRT’s legacy of providing relevant and reliable performance data for Android devices.”

MobileXPRT is part of the BenchmarkXPRT suite of performance evaluation tools, which includes WebXPRT, TouchXPRT, CrXPRT, BatteryXPRT, and HDXPRT. The XPRTs help users get the facts before they buy, use, or evaluate tech products such as computers, tablets, and phones.

To learn more about the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community, go to www.BenchmarkXPRT.com.

About Principled Technologies, Inc.
Principled Technologies, Inc. is a leading provider of technology marketing and learning & development services. It administers the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community.

Principled Technologies, Inc. is located in Durham, North Carolina, USA. For more information, please visit www.PrincipledTechnologies.com.

Company Contact
Justin Greene

BenchmarkXPRT Development Community
Principled Technologies, Inc.
1007 Slater Road, Ste. 300
Durham, NC 27703

BenchmarkXPRTsupport@PrincipledTechnologies.com

MobileXPRT 3 is here!

We’re excited to announce that MobileXPRT 3 is now available to the public! MobileXPRT 3 is the latest version of our popular tool for evaluating the performance of Android devices. The BenchmarkXPRT Development Community has been using a community preview for several weeks, but now anyone can run the tool and publish their results.

Compatible with systems running Android 5.0 and above, MobileXPRT 3 includes the same performance workloads as MobileXPRT 2015 (Apply Photo Effects, Create Photo Collages, Create Slideshow, Encrypt Personal Content, and Detect Faces to Organize Photos), plus a new optical character recognition-based workload called Scan Receipts for Spreadsheet.

MobileXPRT 3 is available at MobileXPRT.com and on the Google Play Store. Alternatively, you can download the app using either of the links below:



After trying out MobileXPRT 3, please submit your scores here and send any comments to BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com. To see test results from a variety of systems, go to MobileXPRT.com and click View Results, where you’ll find scores from a variety of Android devices. We look forward to seeing your results!

Justin

The MobileXPRT 3 Community Preview is here!

The MobileXPRT 3 Community Preview is now available to BenchmarkXPRT Development Community members! If you are not familiar with the updates and changes we implemented in the newest version of MobileXPRT, you can read more in the XPRT blog.

Members can access the MobileXPRT 3 Community Preview APK on the MobileXPRT tab in the Members’ Area. We also posted an installation guide that provides a general overview of the app and walks users through each step. The entire process takes about five minutes on most devices.

If you have any questions about MobileXPRT 3 or joining the community, please let us know. Happy testing!

Justin

The MobileXPRT 3 Community Preview is almost here!

We appreciate everyone’s patience and feedback during the MobileXPRT 3 development process. We’re in the process of wrapping up some final testing and expect to release the Community Preview (CP) within the next week.

The first thing testers will notice about the CP is a new UI/UX experience. The aesthetic is completely different than MobileXPRT 2015. We’ve made it easy to select and deselect individual workloads by tapping the workload name, and we’ve consolidated common menu items into an Android-style task bar at the bottom of the screen to improve navigation.

Fundamentally, we rebuilt MobileXPRT with Android Studio SDK 27 to bring it up to date with contemporary Android development standards. While we kept the five workloads from MobileXPRT 2015, we gave one a major overhaul, updated the test content in the remaining four, and added a sixth workload: Optical Character Recognition. You can find more details about these changes in our earlier discussion about MobileXPRT 3 development in the blog.

The screenshots below show the MobileXPRT 3 main screen, how the screen looks when users customize the combination of workloads, the end-of-test results screen, and the archived results page with one test result view expanded. Note that the archived results page also displays the median of all overall test scores completed to date.

We’ll announce the CP in a community message and here on the blog when it goes live. As with all community previews, the MobileXPRT 3 CP will be available only to BenchmarkXPRT Development Community members. If you have any questions about MobileXPRT 3 or joining the community, please let us know. Happy testing!

Justin

MobileXPRT 3 start screen   MobileXPRT 3 select workloadsMobileXPRT 3 results   MobileXPRT 3 results library

The XPRT Spotlight Black Friday Showcase helps you shop with confidence

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are almost here, and you may be feeling overwhelmed by the sea of tech gifts to choose from. The XPRTs are here to help. We’ve gathered the product specs and performance facts for some of the hottest tech devices in one convenient place—the XPRT Spotlight Black Friday Showcase. The Showcase is a free shopping tool that provides side-by-side comparisons of some of the season’s most popular smartphones, laptops, Chromebooks, tablets, and PCs. It helps you make informed buying decisions so you can shop with confidence this holiday season.

Want to know how the Google Pixel 3 stacks up against the Apple iPhone XS or Samsung Galaxy Note9 in web browsing performance or screen size? Simply select any two devices in the Showcase and click Compare. You can also search by device type if you’re interested in a specific form factor such as consoles or tablets.

The Showcase doesn’t go away after Black Friday. We’ll rename it the XPRT Holiday Buying Showcase and continue to add devices throughout the shopping season. So be sure to check back in and see how your tech gifts measure up.

If this is the first you’ve heard about the XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight, here’s a little background. Our hands-on testing process equips consumers with accurate information about how devices function in the real world. We test devices using our industry-standard BenchmarkXPRT tools: WebXPRT, MobileXPRT, TouchXPRT, CrXPRT, BatteryXPRT, and HDXPRT. In addition to benchmark results, we include photographs, specs, and prices for all products. New devices come online weekly, and you can browse the full list of almost 150 that we’ve featured to date on the Spotlight page.

If you represent a device vendor and want us to feature your product in the XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight, please visit the website for more details.

Do you have suggestions for the Spotlight page or device recommendations? Let us know!

Justin

A BatteryXPRT bug fix is on the way

Some time ago, we started to see unusual BatteryXPRT battery life estimates and high variance on some devices when running tests at the default length of 5.25 hours (seven 45-minute iterations). We suspected that the problem resulted from changes in how new OS versions report battery life on certain devices (e.g., charging past a reported level of 100 percent). In addition, the progress of battery technology in general means that the average phone battery lasts much longer than it did a few years ago. Together, these factors sometimes led to BatteryXPRT runs where the OS reported little to no battery decrease during the first few iterations of a test. We concluded that 5.25 hours wasn’t long enough to produce an accurate battery life estimate.

After extensive experimentation and testing, we’ve decided to release a new build that increases the default BatteryXPRT test length from 5.25 hours (seven iterations) to 45 hours (60 iterations) to allow enough time for a full rundown on most phones. Based on our testing, we consider full rundown tests to be the most accurate and will use those exclusively in our Spotlight testing and elsewhere. Testers will still have the option of choosing shorter test durations, but BatteryXPRT will flag the results with a qualifier that recommends performing a full rundown.

We plan to release the updated build by the end of next week and update BatteryXPRT documentation to reflect the changes. We have not changed any of the workloads and both performance results and full-rundown battery life estimates will be comparable to results from earlier builds.

BatteryXPRT continues to be a useful tool for gauging the performance and expected battery life of Android devices while simulating real-world tasks. If you have any questions about BatteryXPRT, please feel free to ask!

Justin

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