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Category: TouchXPRT

Rapid Evolution

As Bill mentioned last week, we are considering changing the name of PhoneXPRT, not only because of the interest in using the benchmark scenarios on Android based tablets, but also because the line between phones and tablets has become blurred.

Devices that are too big to be a phone and too small to be a proper tablet are everywhere. PC Magazine says the first true “phablet” – possibly the ugliest portmanteau in the history of technology – was the AT&T EO 440 in 1993. However, it was more 8 years before Samsung had the first really successful phablet, the Galaxy Note. Now, less than 2 years later, there are rumors that Samsung may kill the Note in favor of the Samsung Galaxy Mega.

Obviously, this is one of the fastest evolving areas in tech. This rapid evolution has given us an almost bewildering array for devices, from small phones such as the Sony Xperia Mini, which a child can hold in one hand, to the ASUS Transformer AiO P1801, which has a whopping 18.4” screen! All this speed and diversity obviously pose challenges for the new benchmark, but it makes the work very exciting as well!

We have received comments about the name and we really appreciate those. If you have any thoughts, let us know. We hope to make a decision about whether to change the name soon.

Eric

P.S. I should note: The Transformer AiOP1801 also runs Windows 8, which means it’s a great candidate for TouchXPRT as well.

 

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No time to rest

Last week was possibly our biggest week ever. We announced PhoneXPRT, a new benchmark for evaluating the performance of smartphones, and released TouchXPRT 2013 and WebXPRT 2013 to the general public.

Since then, there’s been a lot of interest. The numbers keep going up! We’re not just talking about page views – people are downloading TouchXPRT and lots of people are running WebXPRT.

People have also been downloading the TouchXPRT source, which is very exciting. We strongly encourage community members to look at how the benchmark is put together. If you have programming skills and want to submit code, get in touch with us at benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechologies.com.  We’d love to hear from you!

Oh, and there’s a new video! This one introduces WebXPRT to the public. It gives a good idea of the range of devices WebXPRT will run on.

That’s a lot for one week. We’re not resting on our laurels, though. Obviously, we’re working on PhoneXPRT. However, let’s not forget about HDXPRT. The comment period for HDXPRT 2013 officially closed on March 6 and we are starting to work on the HDXPRT 2013 design document. If you have any feedback you haven’t sent, please do send it on. We’ll do our best to incorporate it into the design document.

Eric

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What a week!

This has been quite a week for the BenchmarkXPRT family. We kicked off the week by announcing a new benchmark: PhoneXPRT. PhoneXPRT is designed to test small form factor devices, such as smart phones.  PhoneXPRT will initially run on Android. For more information, read the press release at http://www.prweb.com/releases/phoneXPRT/pt0213/prweb10461639.htm

There was more to come. Today we formally released TouchXPRT 2013 and WebXPRT 2013. The community and the media have been using these as community previews for weeks now. Now that we’ve released the benchmarks, anyone may freely use them.  You can read the press release at http://www.prweb.com/releases/TouchXPRTWebXPRT/0213/prweb10474803.htm

We have also released the TouchXPRT 2013 source to the community. The instructions for building the benchmark are the same as for building the community preview. Remember that community members have access to the source, but it is not available to the general public.

As WebXPRT 2013 moves from being a community preview to a public release, people may have concerns about privacy. While anyone using WebXPRT 2013 agrees to share their results, the database does not store any identifying information.

Remember, the HDXPRT comment period is still open! Please send your comments in. If you’ve not read the RFC yet, you can find it at http://www.principledtechnologies.com/hdxprt/forum/hdxprt2013RFC.php.

Eric

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Going Live

As you may know, the Mobile World Congress (MWC) starts Monday in Barcelona. I really hate that I can’t go to this show and not only because I love Barcelona!

However, MWC seems like a good time to release TouchXPRT 2013 and WebXPRT 2013. We’re testing the final builds now, and plan to make them available to the public next week.  If you’re not a community member and want to see what all the fuss is about before then, please join the community and check them out.

As we discussed in the Webinar back in January, we have been able to verify that the results from both benchmarks are in line with those of the community previews. That means that we don’t anticipate any problems comparing results from the CP1 versions with those from the release versions.

While TouchXPRT 2013 CP1 did not have a total score, based on your feedback, we added one in final version of TouchXPRT 2013.

I’ve included some comparison results from WebXPRT 2013 at the end of this post. As always, we would love to have any results you can share for either benchmark.

We’ve also been thinking about where to go next. We’re not ready to talk yet, but expect big news next week!

Bill

Device WebXPRT 2013 Overall score
Nexus 7 201
Kindle Fire 95
iPad 2 52
iPad 4 181
Samsung Galaxy SIII 168
iPhone 5 167
iPad Mini 110

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Some good questions

On Tuesday, we had a Webinar for the BenchmarkXPRT community. This Webinar covered the material that Bill would have given in individual presentations at CES. As such, it was an overview of the XPRT family.

The Webinar was well attended. We will be posting the slides and the recording of the Webinar online soon. However, we got some good questions, and thought we’d share our responses with you.

How will updates to TouchXPRT, and other benchmarks, affect results? We will avoid affecting results as much as possible. However, when updates do affect results, we will disclose the effect and the testing we performed to verify it.

Will we provide a way for benchmark users to talk to each other about support issues, perhaps via OpenBlog? We had envisioned the benchmark forums providing this opportunity. However, we are very happy to look into ways to make community communication easier and more effective.

Do you provide company memberships, as opposed to individual memberships? Not currently, although we will certainly look into this. We have no formal voting mechanism, as SPEC and some other organizations have. We may get there one day, but it’s not currently an issue. If your concern is about paying multiple membership fees, contact us, and we’ll work with you to avoid that.

In HDXPRT, can you select the CPU or GPU for video conversion and control the quality of the conversion? We have not investigated this. HDXPRT installs the applications using the default settings. However, because HDXPRT installs the applications in a separate step from running the test, it might be possible to manually change the benchmark settings and then run HDXPRT. We will be looking into this and reporting on it going forward.

How does the server influence WebXPRT results? We have run WebXPRT hosted on different servers in different locations, and seen little influence on the results. However, as part of preparing the WebXPRT general release, we will characterize and document the influence of the server.

Feel free to let us know what you think about these or any other topics. As I said earlier, we’ll be posting the whole Webinar online soon.

Eric

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Busy start to a new year

I hope everyone had a great holiday, and that you are looking forward to a wonderful 2013!

Since the last blog post, more reviews using WebXPRT and TouchXPRT have appeared.

Use of the benchmarks is growing!

As we mentioned in the blog post The newest member of the family, we are we are reorganizing the XPRT family of benchmarks under the umbrella of BenchmarkXPRT. The next step is bringing the BenchmarkXPRT page on-line. That is happening Monday. BenchmarkXPRT.com is now the place to go for the latest news about all the benchmarks. As part of this reorganization, the What’s New section of the HDXPRT home page will be moving.

We will also be creating a new Facebook page and Twitter feed. We think this new organization will better suit the needs of the community as we go forward.

LATE BREAKING NEWS: We unfortunately will not be able to be at CES. We will be holding Webinars soon to tell you all the latest developments and listen to your opinions.

Eric

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