Category: MobileXPRT 2013 source

BenchmarkXPRT in China

on September 10, 2015

Last week, we talked about some of the changes we’re making to the BenchmarkXPRT site to make it easier to use. This week, we’d like to talk a bit about improvements we’ve been making to support our users in China.

As you may remember, the first of the XPRTs to have a Chinese UI was BatteryXPRT. We’ve since released WebXPRT 2015 and MobileXPRT 2015, both of which have also have Chinese UIs. We’re also in the process of getting MobileXPRT 2015 listed in several major Chinese app stores. (MobileXPRT 2013 is currently available from Xiaomi and Zhushou 360.)

In other words, we’re always thinking of ways to enhance the XPRT experience for our users in China. To improve download speeds, we’ve long hosted WebXPRT on a mirror site in Singapore. Recently, based on feedback from our users and our own analysis, we’ve changed the way that the privacy notice is displayed on that site. The change allows you to run WebXPRT without loading any Google analytics, which means faster load times for all users.

We will continue to work to improve our localization. This is an area where we can use the help of the community. If you have translation skills and want to contribute the strings for a UI in your language, let us know.

Eric

Last week in the XPRTs

We added a new TouchXPRT result
We added a new HDXPRT result

Posted in BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Chinese, Collaborative benchmark development, MobileXPRT, MobileXPRT 2013 source, MobileXPRT 2015, WebXPRT 2015 |

Patching and future proofing

By Justin Greene

on September 18, 2014

We recently became aware of two potential issues with running MobileXPRT 2013 on versions of Android 4.4 (KitKat) and a pre-release version of Android L. The first involves a reported failure of MobileXPRT 2013 to display scores when running on a Nexus 5 running KitKat with the ART runtime enabled. ART is an experimental Android Runtime available on a number of mobile devices, and offers several features not found in Android’s current default runtime, Dalvik. We have not been able to reproduce this specific problem, and have successfully tested MobileXPRT on a Nexus 5 running Android 4.4.3 with ART enabled. If you encounter this problem, contact us at BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

The second issue is specific to the pre-release version of Android L. On that OS, we have seen a failure of the MobileXPRT Create Slideshow workload. We found that while previous versions of Android used specific addresses when loading libraries, this pre-release version of Android L loads libraries at different addresses as a security precaution. This appeared to be causing the workload failure. Recompiling with the –pie flag, so as to be position independent, seems to fix the problem.

As soon as thorough testing is complete, we’ll be releasing a patched build on MobileXPRT.com, and expect no problems running MobileXPRT on Android L.

If you have any questions about MobileXPRT or any of the other benchmarks, feel free to send us a message.

Justin

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Posted in Android, MobileXPRT, MobileXPRT 2013 source |

On to the next thing

By Eric Hale

on August 22, 2013

Last week, we released MobileXPRT 2013 to the public and published it as a free app on Google Play. On Monday, we will release the source code to the community. It hasn’t been long since we released the source code for MobileXPRT CP 1.1, but it’s an important part of the community model that the source for the current version is available to the community.

While we were putting the finishing touches on MobileXPRT, we’ve been hard at work on HDXPRT 2013. The feedback on HDXPRT made it clear that the benchmark should be smaller, faster, and easier to install. We have been working to keep all the value of the benchmark, and update the workloads to reflect current usage, even as we slim it down.

Speaking of HDXPRT, as we mentioned in The show is in previews, HDXPRT 2012 has issues running on Windows 8.1. However, we have had some success getting HDXPRT to run on Windows 8.1 by using beta drivers from Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA. We are still investigating this, and hope to have a general workaround for this soon.

There’s lots more stuff in the pipeline. Exciting times ahead!

Eric

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Posted in HDXPRT 2012, HDXPRT 2013, MobileXPRT 2013 source, Windows 8.1 |

Back to the source

By Eric Hale

on July 4, 2013

Last week, we released MobileXPRT CP1.1.This week, we released the source code for MobileXPRT CP1.1. You can download it here (login required). The procedure for building it is the same as for the previous CP. As we discussed in Kick the tires. Look under the hood, it’s easy to set up the environment and all the necessary software is free.

We believe that one of the most important things we can do is make the source code available. We believe that increasing the transparency of the benchmarking process and stimulating the participation of industry players and the public in the definition, development, understanding, and auditing of the benchmarks will lead to better benchmarks.

You may be thinking “Then why not open source the benchmark?” The short answer is that we need to make sure that the results from any version of our benchmarks are ones you can trust. You can watch Bill discuss this in BenchmarkXPRT: It’s not a benchmark.

We believe that the community model—which gives you total visibility into the benchmark, allows you to run your own experiments and contribute to future versions of the benchmark, and still protects the integrity of the results—strikes the right balance.

If you’re not a member, please consider joining. It’s easy.

If you are a member, check out the code and tell us how it can be better!

Eric

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, MobileXPRT 2013 source, Video |

A new version and a new video

By Eric Hale

on June 27, 2013

As we said in It’s finally here!, the Android ecosystem is very diverse and we knew that MobileXPRT might have problems on some devices. So far, we have encountered a couple of issues:

The Slideshow test failed during post validation check on the Onda tablet.
The Zoom-n-pinch test was unstable, failing part of the time, on the Zopo phone

On Friday, we will be releasing MobileXPRT 2013 community preview 1.1 (CP1.1), which fixes these problems. The results from version CP1.1 are comparable to the current community preview. If you have any problems, or questions, please e-mail us at benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechnologies.com

We will release the source for CP1.1 next week.

In other news, we released a new video this week, BenchmarkXPRT: It’s not a benchmark. In this video, Bill answers some common questions about the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community. If you’ve ever wondered what exactly BenchmarkXPRT is, or why the world needs more benchmarks, this is the video for you.

Eric

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Posted in Android, BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, MobileXPRT, MobileXPRT 2013 source, Video |

Kick the tires. Look under the hood.

By Eric Hale

on June 6, 2013

Today, we released the source code for the MobileXPRT 2013 CP to the community (community login required). If you already have an Android development environment set up, building the benchmark is very straightforward. If you do not have a build environment, it’s not difficult to create one. All the necessary software is free, and the build documentation includes detailed instructions for creating the build environment on Windows 8.

Of course, you can also build Android applications using Linux or Mac OS X. The instructions include links to the information you need to set up those environments as well.

If you have suggestions about how we could make the application better, or you write some code you would like to submit for inclusion in the benchmark, please contact us at benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechologies.com.

Bill wrote about a presentation he gave to Mobile PC Extended Battery Life Working Group (EBL WG) in the post Presentation XPRT. We’ve put the slides from that presentation up on Slideshare. Check them out!

Eric

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Posted in Android, BenchmarkXPRT development community, MobileXPRT, MobileXPRT 2013 source |

Category: MobileXPRT 2013 source

BenchmarkXPRT in China

Last week in the XPRTs

Patching and future proofing

On to the next thing

Back to the source

A new version and a new video

Kick the tires. Look under the hood.

Check out the other XPRTs: