Mobile World Congress
(MWC) 2023 kicks off on
February 27th, and we’re excited that Mark Van Name will be
attending the event for the first time since the last pre-pandemic show in 2019. Each year, MWC offers a great opportunity to examine the
new trends and technologies that will shape mobile technology in the years
to come. The major themes of this year’s show include the latest advances in 5G
and IoT technologies, along with what GSMA is calling “Reality+.” Reality+
refers to the intersection of AI, AR, VR, and 5G, and the potential impacts of
these immersive technologies on our future.
Mark will be sharing his thoughts from this year’s show here in the XPRT blog, so be sure to stayed tuned. Will you be attending MWC this year? If so, let us know!
If you’ve been reading the XPRT blog for a while, you know that
we occasionally like to revisit a series of in-house WebXPRT comparison tests
to see if recent updates have changed the performance rankings of popular web
browsers. We published our most
recent comparison last April, when we
used WebXPRT 4 to compare the performance of five browsers on the same system.
For this round of tests, we used a Dell
XPS 13 7930, which features an Intel Core i3-10110U processor and 4 GB of RAM, running
Windows 11 Home updated to version 22H2 (22621.1105). We installed all current
Windows updates, and updated each of the browsers under test: Brave, Google
Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera.
After the update process completed, we turned off updates to
prevent them from interfering with test runs. We ran WebXPRT 4 three times on each
of the five browsers. The score we post for each browser is the median of the
three test runs.
In our last round of tests, Edge was the clear winner, with a
2.2 percent performance advantage over Chrome. Firefox came in last, about 3
percent slower than Opera, which was in the middle of the pack. With updated
versions of the browsers, the only change in rank order was that Brave moved
into a tie with Opera.
While the rank order from this round of tests was very similar to the previous round, we did observe two clear performance trends: (1) the range between high and low scores was tighter, dropping from a difference of 7.8 percent to 4.3 percent, and (2) every browser demonstrated improved performance. The chart below illustrates both trends. Firefox showed the single largest score improvement at 7.8 percent, but the performance jump for each browser was considerable.
Do these results mean that Microsoft
Edge will always provide a speedier web experience, or Firefox will always be
slower than the others? Not necessarily. It’s true that a device with a higher
WebXPRT score will probably feel faster during daily web activities than one
with a much lower score, but your experience depends in part on the types of
things you do on the web, along with your system’s privacy settings, memory
load, ecosystem integration, extension activity, and web app capabilities.
In addition, browser speed can noticeably
increase or decrease after an update, and OS-specific optimizations can affect
performance, such as with Edge on Windows 11 and Chrome on Chrome OS. All these
variables are important to keep in mind when considering how WebXPRT results
translate to your everyday experience.
Have you used WebXPRT to compare browser performance on the same system? Let us know how it turned out!
Around the beginning
of each new year, we like to take the opportunity to look back and summarize
the XPRT highlights from the previous year. Readers of our newsletter are
familiar with the stats and updates we include each month, but for our blog
readers who don’t receive the newsletter, we’ve compiled some highlights from
2022 below.
XPRTs in the media
Journalists, advertisers, and analysts referenced the XPRTs thousands of times
in 2022. It’s always rewarding to know that the XPRTs have proven to be useful
and reliable assessment tools for technology publications around the world.
Media sites that used the XPRTs in 2022 include AnandTech, Android Authority, Benchlife.info
(China), BodNara (South Korea), ComputerBase (Germany), DISKIDEE (Belgium),
eTeknix, Expert Reviews, Gadgets 360, Hardware.info (The Netherlands), Hardware
Zone (Singapore), ITC.ua (Ukraine), ITmedia (Japan), Itndaily.ru (Russia), Notebookcheck,
PCMag, PC-Welt (Germany), PCWorld, TechPowerUp, Tom’s Guide, TweakTown, and
ZOL.com (China).
Downloads and
confirmed runs
In 2022, we had more than 10,800 benchmark downloads and 183,300 confirmed runs.
Users have run our most popular benchmark, WebXPRT, more than 1,135,500 times since
its debut in 2013! WebXPRT continues to be a go-to, industry-standard
performance benchmark for OEM labs, vendors, and leading tech press outlets around
the globe.
XPRT media, tools, and publications Part of our mission with the XPRTs is to produce tools and materials that help testers better understand the ins and outs of benchmarking in general and the XPRTs in particular. To help achieve this goal, we published the following in 2022:
We’re thankful for everyone who used the XPRTs, joined the community, and sent questions and suggestions throughout 2022. We’re excited to see what’s in store for the XPRTs in 2023!
We
have a very talented studio team here at Principled Technologies, and this
week, the team worked with the XPRTs to put together a CES 2023 recap video. In
it, I discuss why we traveled to CES, my overall impressions from the show, and
how the ideas and technologies presented at the show may influence the development
of future XPRT benchmarks. If you missed last week’s post
about my initial thoughts on the advances in AR and VR technology at the show,
or you didn’t get a chance to see some of our photos from the show on social media, this week’s video
provides a good summary of our CES-related activity.
To view the video, you
can follow this link or click the
screenshot below. If you followed CES this year and have any thoughts about how
the XPRTs can help to evaluate emerging technologies, we’d love to hear
from you!
The
last time the XPRTs attended the Consumer Electronics Show
in Las Vegas was in January 2020,
shortly before shutdowns due to the global pandemic began. More than 171,000
people attended that year’s show, the 2021 show was totally virtual, and CES
shortened the 2022 show after many exhibitors and media pulled out during the
Omicron surge. While some aspects of the event are returning to normal this
year, about one-third of the typically jam-packed Las Vegas Convention Center
space is empty, and only about 100,000 people are likely to attend. Nevertheless,
the show is still enormous and full of fascinating new technology.
Just one day into the show, I’ve already noticed some interesting changes in the virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) areas since I last attended in 2020. One change is a significant expansion in the sensory capabilities of VR equipment. For a long time, VR technologies have focused almost solely on visual and audio input technology and the graphics-rendering capabilities necessary for lag-free, immersive experiences. In 2020, I saw companies working on various types of haptic feedback gear, including full-body suits, that pushed the boundaries of VR beyond sight and sound. Now, several companies are demonstrating significant progress in “real-feel touch” technologies for VR. One such company is HaptX, which is developing a set of gloves (see the picture below) that pump air through “microfluidic actuators” so that users can feel the size and shape of virtual objects they interact with in a VR environment. While we often think of VR being used for gaming and entertainment, advances in realistic, multi-sensory capabilities can lead to VR becoming a valuable tool for all kinds of industrial and professional training applications.
A show attendee tries out HaptX gear.
Another change I’ve noticed is how AR seems poised to move from demos to everyday life by means of integration with all types of smartphone apps. I enjoyed speaking with a representative from a Korean AR company called Arbeon. Arbeon is developing an app that will allow users to point their phone’s camera at an object (a wine bottle in the picture below), and see an array of customizable, interactive AR animations surrounding the object. You’ll be able to find product info, see and leave feedback similar to “likes” and reviews, attach emojis, tag friends, and even purchase the product, all from your phone’s AR-enhanced camera and screen. It’s an interesting concept with limitless applications. While VR is here to stay and getting better all the time, I personally think that AR will become much more integrated into everyday life in the coming years. I also think AR apps for phones will allow the technology to take off more quickly in the near term than clunkier options like AR eyeglasses.
The large screen displays how Arbeon’s AR phone app interacts with objects like a wine bottle.
Of course, thinking about AR has led me to wonder if we’ll be able to incorporate AR-related workloads into future XPRTs. As new technologies place new and unprecedented levels of processing demand on our computing hardware, the need for objective performance evaluation will continue. Providing reliable, objective performance data is why the XPRTs exist, and planning for the future of the XPRTs is why we’re at CES 2023. If you have any thoughts about how the XPRTs can help to evaluate new technologies, we’d love to hear from you!
Next month,
I’ll be representing the XPRTs at CES Las Vegas for the first time since January
2020! After almost three years of pandemic-related disruption and uncertainty, it’s
exciting to return to one of the largest tech shows in the world.
CES always provides
a great opportunity to survey emerging tech and industry trends, get hands-on
with cutting-edge hardware, and gather insights that help lay the groundwork
for XPRT development in the years ahead. I look forward to sharing my thoughts
and impressions from CES here in the first XPRT blog post of 2023. We typically
post on Thursdays, but because the show runs from Thursday through Sunday this year,
that post will go live on Friday, January 6.
If you’ll be attending CES 2023, and would like to meet and discuss any aspect of the XPRTs, please let me know!
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