The relevance and accuracy of mobile benchmarking has come under fire over the past several months. We have seen headlines addressing a range of issues, from a synthetic benchmark failing the proverbial “red face test”, to a research firm which used the calculation of π to compare smartphone power efficiency. This is an important topic, and Qualcomm® believes there is long term and sustainable value in providing industry partners and consumers with a real-world score that truly reflects their user experience. It is clearly time for a change.

To help accelerate the adoption of more useful mobile evaluation tools, Qualcomm has sponsored Berkeley Design Technology, Inc. to independently create a new user experience rating for mobile devices. This consumer focused rating is designed exclusively for mobile and to reflect how we all use our smartphones in our daily lives. It will contain a comprehensive suite of use cases designed to capture the typical scenarios, usages, and workflows found in a day of use. Not only is the benchmark relevant to the end user, but it will also be transparent making this mobile evaluation tool something truly focused on user experience.

BDTI’s user experience benchmark is a timely solution to the concerns around representative mobile benchmarks. After all, which statistics are more important to you when purchasing a smartphone? How many hours of battery life you’d get while web browsing, talking, e-mailing, and gaming or how many milliseconds it takes to calculate 3.14?