Category: WebXPRT 2015

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 |

What’s in a name?

By Eric Hale

on July 30, 2015

A couple of weeks ago, the Notebookcheck German site published a review of the Huawei P8lite. We were pleased to see they used WebXPRT 2015, and the P8 Lite got an overall score of 47. This week, AnandTech published their review of the Huawei P8lite. In their review, the P8lite got an overall score of 59!

Those scores are very different, but it was not difficult to figure out why. The P8lite comes in two versions, depending on your market. The version Notebookcheck used is based on HiSilicon’s Kirin 620, while the version AnandTech used was Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 615 SoC. It’s also worth noting that the phone Notebookcheck tested was running Android 5.0, while the phone AnandTech tested was running Android 4.4. With different hardware and different operating systems, it’s no surprise that the results were different.

One consequence of the XPRTs being used across the world is that is that it is not uncommon to see results from devices in different markets. As we’ve said before, many things can influence benchmark results, so don’t assume that two devices with the same name are identical.

Kudos to both AnandTech and Notebookcheck for their care in presenting the system information for the devices in their reviews. The AnandTech review even included a brief description of the two models of the P8lite. This type of information is essential for helping people make informed decisions.

In other news, Windows 10 launched yesterday. We’re looking forward to seeing the TouchXPRT and WebXPRT results!

Eric

Posted in Benchmark metrics, Benchmarking computing devices, WebXPRT 2015, Windows 10 |

Get the 411 on WebXPRT 2015

By Eric Hale

on July 16, 2015

We’re publishing the WebXPRT 2015 white paper tomorrow. It contains lots of information about WebXPRT 2015 that you won’t find anywhere else. In addition to explaining what the tests do, the test descriptions detail the particular aspects of Web browsing performance that the test stresses.

The white paper also contains a list of the third-party libraries that WebXPRT uses, what those libraries do, and where you can find them. It also lists the HTML 5 capabilities that WebXPRT 2015 requires. And, as in past XPRT white papers, we include a spreadsheet showing how the benchmark calculates its results. There’s a lot of information, so check it out!

Meanwhile, we’re hard at work on MobileXPRT 2015. The Android M Developer Preview 2 hasn’t presented any new problems, so things are looking good. I expect to have more details about the upcoming MobileXPRT 2015 community preview soon!

Eric

Posted in Android, Android M, MobileXPRT, MobileXPRT 2015, WebXPRT 2015, White papers |

WebXPRT update is now available

By Eric Hale

on July 10, 2015

This update resolves an issue we found with the Local Notes test running in the Microsoft Edge browser. We described the issue in the blog post Mystery Solved. Both versions of WebXPRT now run correctly in the Microsoft Edge browser. The change did not affect the benchmark scores. Results from the new versions are comparable to existing results.

This issue affected both WebXPRT 2015 and WebXPRT 2013. The updated versions of WebXPRT 2015 and WebXPRT 2013 are now live on WebXPRT.com.

If you want more information, please contact BenchmarkXPRTSupport@principledtechnologies.com.

Posted in Microsoft Edge, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2013, WebXPRT 2015, Windows 10 |

One now, one later

By Eric Hale

on July 9, 2015

Windows 10 has been on our mind this week.

Last week, we explained why the Notes test in WebXPRT would not complete when running in Edge on Windows 10. We’ve implemented the fix we discussed and have finished testing the updated versions of WebXPRT 2013 and WebXPRT 2015. We’ll release them by the end of the week. Results from the new versions are comparable with results from the existing versions.

In the current Windows 10 Mobile Beta, WebXPRT 2015 does not scroll correctly in portrait mode. It does scroll correctly in landscape mode, so, as a workaround, one can run it that way on the Windows 10 Mobile Beta.

Speaking of Windows 10 Mobile, we’ve talked before about TouchXPRT 2016 and how its purpose is to compare Windows 10 across different device types. However, Microsoft has said that Windows 10 Mobile won’t be available until after the release of Windows 10 on PCs. More importantly, the APIs and development tools won’t be final until July 29. Once Microsoft releases those tools, we’ll do our builds and tests and release a community preview.

That being said, TouchXPRT 2014 is the tool to use for comparing Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. By the time mobile devices running Windows 10 are available, TouchXPRT 2016 will be available.

Eric

Posted in TouchXPRT, TouchXPRT 2014, TouchXPRT 2016, TouchXPRT development process, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2015, Windows 10, Windows 8.1 |

Mystery solved

By Eric Hale

on July 2, 2015

As we mentioned a few weeks ago, the WebXPRT Local Notes test would not complete on recent builds of Windows 10 when using the Edge browser. Other browsers complete WebXPRT in recent Windows 10 builds without any problems.

We now know what is causing this behavior. The Local Notes test stores encrypted content in LocalStorage as UTF-16 character encoded Unicode strings. The encrypted content included values that are not considered valid characters in certain use cases. The current Edge implementation treats these characters as undefined and cannot store them. Other browsers may not have had an issue with the characters because of differences in the way they implement LocalStorage.

We’ve been able to work around this by using escape sequences for unsupported Unicode code points. Testing so far has not shown any perceptible change in results, so we believe that we will able to make this change to WebXPRT without compromising the comparability of the results.

Because this issue affects both WebXPRT 2013 and WebXPRT 2015, we’re planning to update both versions. We’ll let you know as soon as they are available.

If you’d like more details about this issue and the fix, please let us know.

Eric

Posted in Performance benchmarking, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2015, What makes a good benchmark?, Windows 10 |

Category: WebXPRT 2015

BenchmarkXPRT in China

Last week in the XPRTs

What’s in a name?

Get the 411 on WebXPRT 2015

WebXPRT update is now available

One now, one later

Mystery solved

Check out the other XPRTs: