Did you ever wonder how Google tests screen lag on Android and Chrome OS devices? You may say manually but test results won’t be as accurate as the Chrome TouchBot. The latter is a special robot designed by the Chrome OS team and built by OptoFidelity, a Finnish tech company. The robot measures end-to-end latency of all Chrome OS and Android devices.

François Beaufort, the self-proclaimed Chrome Happiness Evangelist, shared a video that shows a high speed video recording of the Touchbot showing how “drawing a line on a screen is actually drawn in segments that fade in slowly”. Watch the video below and see for yourself:

There are more latency tests available like Tap, Click, FPS, Move, Scroll, and Flash. You can view the results on crostouchlatency.appspot.com. As for the Touchbot source code, the open-source is available at Chromium.googlesource.com.

On the video, you will see how the Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 7, and Nexus 9 have been tested for screen lag. Google doesn’t like lag on smartphones so this Chrome TouchBot is expected to spot delays by poking the screen many times, making several swipes in several web-based tests.

Such tests are aimed to identify hardware and coding problems or if there are any. Honestly, it’s just one of the many monitoring devices Google is using because it is said to be one of most important tools since a lot of Android actions involve touch.

SOURCE: François Beaufort, Google