BenchmarkXPRT Blog banner

Category: WebXPRT

A first look

Eric Hale
By Eric Hale
on January 29, 2015

The beta build of WebXPRT 2015 is complete. Although the benchmark is still under development, it looks great!

As we described in the design document, it includes a number of improvements over WebXPRT 2013. There are more, and more demanding, tests. The UI has a cleaner, more modern look, and includes a couple of improvements people have been asking for. There is now descriptive text so that you know what’s happening during the test. Also, a progress indicator in the upper right corner shows you how close the test is to completion. Although the screens aren’t final, here’s a preview of one of the new DNA Sequence Analysis test screens:

WebXPRT DNA

One of the great virtues of WebXPRT is that it runs on almost anything. However, that level of compatibility has limited the range of devices WebXPRT can test. WebXPRT 2015 introduces a set of experimental tests. Running these tests is optional and their results are not included in the Overall Score. We hope that folks will use them to evaluate both new technologies and platform-specific technologies. The first Community Preview will include a WebGL-based 3D experimental test. We expect to add new experimental tests over time and we’re hoping community members will contribute tests or ideas for them.

I’m very excited to see the new WebXPRT. We’re testing now, and I hope to be able to let you know when the Community Preview will be available soon.

Eric

Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, Community Preview, WebGL, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2015 |

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 |

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

Comment on this post in the forums

Posted in Android, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Chrome OS, Collaborative benchmark development, Community Preview, CrXPRT, WebXPRT |

News about MobileXPRT 2013 and WebXPRT 2015

Eric Hale
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.

Comment on this post in the forums

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

The value of diversity

Eric Hale
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

Comment on this post in the forums

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

Upcoming experiments

Eric Hale
By Eric Hale
on November 6, 2014

Next week, we’ll be releasing the design overview for WebXPRT 2015. WebXPRT 2013 has been an enormous success, having been run tens of thousands of times.

One of the big improvements we are considering for WebXPRT 2015 is adding experimental tests. A big reason for WebXPRT’s success is that it runs on almost every Web-enabled device. We consider it essential to preserve this broad compatibility. However, there are interesting Web technologies that simply are not available on all devices.

Our proposal is to add experimental tests to WebXPRT. These tests would be optional and would not be included in the Overall score, so WebXPRT would still be able to compare the performance of widely different devices. We are looking at technologies such as Web Workers, WebGL, and pre-compiled JavaScript (asm.js).

In addition to adding experimental tests, we are looking at ways to improve the UI, add automation, add new tests, update old tests, and more!

If you are a community member, you’ll get a notice when the overview is available. We will definitely want to know what you think! If you are not a member, it’s a great time to join.

If you have any thoughts on these ideas, or have ideas of your own, please let us know!

Eric

Comment on this post in the forums

Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Performance benchmarking, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2015, What makes a good benchmark? |

Check out the other XPRTs:

Forgot your password?
© Principled Technologies, Inc. 2024   |   Privacy policy

Cookie Notice: Our website uses cookies to deliver a smooth experience by storing logins and saving user information. By continuing to use our site, you agree with our usage of cookies as our privacy policy outlines.

x