Category: MobileXPRT

Welcome to 2015

on January 8, 2015

Happy 2015! We hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season. I certainly did.

Back at the beginning of December, we talked about an intermittent problem that BatteryXPRT was having on the Nexus 9. We fixed the problem shortly after that, but delayed the release to test it on Android 5.01. The testing is complete, and we’ll be releasing BatteryXPRT 2014 v102 next week. As before, it will be available from Google Play and from the BatteryXPRT.com page.

In the last blog post, we recapped come of the highlights of 2014. Moving forward into 2015, WebXPRT 2015 is in development and we’re thinking ahead to the next version of MobileXPRT. We’ll be at Mobile World Congress in March, and at IDF China in April. We’ll tell you about our plans for those conferences over the next few weeks. If you’re planning to be at either of those shows, let us know! We’d love to talk to you.

We’re also planning some exciting new things in 2015. We can’t talk about them yet, but, personally, I can’t wait!

Wishing you all the best in the New Year!

Eric

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Posted in Android, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, IDF, Mobile World Congress, MobileXPRT |

An update for BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android

By Eric Hale

on December 1, 2014

For those of you in the US, I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving.

A couple of weeks ago, we updated MobileXPRT so that it would run correctly on Android 5 (Android L) devices. Later this week, we will be updating BatteryXPRT as well. The current BatteryXPRT build doesn’t work with Android 5 due to failures of the Create Slideshow workload. This is the same workload failure we fixed with an updated MobileXPRT build.

The new build greatly improves things. We successfully tested the new build on an array of Android 5 and 4.4 devices with no failures. However, we have seen the new build of BatteryXPRT return intermittent errors during the Create Photo Collage and Apply Photo Effects workloads when testing on the Nexus 9.

Because the error on the Nexus 9 is intermittent, it’s possible to get results from some runs. These results are still valid.

We haven’t seen this failure on any device other than the Nexus 9, but cannot guarantee that there aren’t others. If you see any other failures, or have any questions, please contact us.

We’re currently working on a solution for this problem. We will, as always, keep you informed.

Eric

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Posted in Android, Battery life, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Collaborative benchmark development, MobileXPRT |

News about MobileXPRT 2013 and WebXPRT 2015

By Eric Hale

on November 14, 2014

Today, we’re releasing a new build (v92) of MobileXPRT 2013 at MobileXPRT.com and the Google Play store. This build addresses issues encountered when testing MobileXPRT on Android 5 devices. The tests have not changed, so new scores are comparable with previous MobileXPRT 2013 scores.

Click here to download the new MobileXPRT build directly from our site.

Alternatively, you can download the MobileXPRT 2013 APKs directly. The APKs are small (17.9 MB total) 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.

Download the MobileXPRT APK here.
Download the MobileXPRT UX Tests APK here.

Also, today we’re publishing the WebXPRT 2015 Design Overview document for community members. You can find the document on the WebXPRT tab in the Members’ Area. We look forward to your feedback!

If you have any questions or concerns about these or any other XPRT-related topics, feel free to contact us at BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

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Posted in Android, Collaborative benchmark development, MobileXPRT, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2015 |

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

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

Has it only been a month?

By Eric Hale

on October 23, 2014

Operating systems will continue to evolve. Whether you consider that a promise or a threat, it’s a fact. Those who write software know the day will come when it’s running in an environment that did not exist when you wrote it. Sometimes you get lucky. WebXPRT, for example, has sailed through the release of new versions of Windows, Android, and iOS with no problems.

At other times, you have to take action. Last month, we alerted you to an issue MobileXPRT had with the pre-release version of Android L. We’ve released an update to MobileXPRT that resolves the issue with Android L.

The technical preview for Windows 10 became available to members of Microsoft’s Windows Insider Program on the first of October, and we’ve had a report that TouchXPRT does not run reliably on it. We are currently investigating this and will let you know the details as soon as we have them. We are checking HDXPRT on Windows 10 as well.

Of course, this is what previews are for. By addressing these issues now, the XPRTs will be ready to support these operating systems when they’re released to the public.

If you are running a preview version of Windows 10 and see a problem with any of our benchmarks, please let us know.

Operating systems continue to evolve. There’s already a new build of the Windows 10 preview. More are on the way. As they come, we will be there testing the XPRTs on them.

Eric

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Posted in Android, BenchmarkXPRT development community, HDXPRT, HDXPRT 2014, MobileXPRT, Windows 10 |

News from the factory floor

By Eric Hale

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 |

Category: MobileXPRT

Welcome to 2015

An update for BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android

News about MobileXPRT 2013 and WebXPRT 2015

The value of diversity

Has it only been a month?

News from the factory floor

Check out the other XPRTs: