3DMark Android Edition updated

April 11, 2013

With more than 100,000 downloads in its first five days in the Google Play store, our 3DMark benchmark app is a big hit with Android users. We've collected thousands of results, added hundreds of new devices to our database and replied to lots of great feedback.

Given the huge range of Android devices out there, it's no surprise that there have been a few unexpected issues too. The good news is that we have just rolled out our first update, which fixes many of the more common problems. Benchmark scores are not affected by this update.

What's New in 3DMark Android Edition v1.0.1-949

New

  • You can now search the Device Channel.
  • You can now report unknown and incorrectly identified devices.

Fixed

  • Fixed a bug that caused crashes for some users.
  • Fixed the "no score" bug that could cause the test to exit after the demo.
  • The Device Channel list loads faster and uses less memory.

Tip

  • To get the best results, we recommend closing all other apps before running 3DMark tests.

3DMark is good at exposing the thermal throttling behaviour of high-powered devices. As these devices heat up they intentionally slow the processor to avoid overheating, which in turn leads to lower scores on successive runs. To reduce this effect, we recommended waiting 15 minutes between runs to allow the device to cool down.

Many people have asked us why some devices score better or worse in 3DMark than they do in other tests. The answer is that 3DMark is primarily a graphics benchmark designed to measure gaming performance. Ice Storm Graphics tests 1 and 2 measure GPU performance. The Physics test measures CPU performance. We combine these results to get the 3DMark Ice Storm score. The overall score is weighted in favour of GPU performance, which means the best scores tend to come from devices with powerful GPUs.

If you just want to compare the latest smartphones and tablets without running the benchmark yourself, check out our 3DMark Best Mobile Devices list. Combining data from over 130,000 3DMark benchmark runs on Android devices worldwide, the Futuremark Hardware Channel is the best way to compare the performance of the hottest mobile devices available today.

Download 3DMark to your Android device

3DMark is a free Android benchmark app available worldwide for more than 1,000 compatible Android smartphones and tablets. 

3DMark Android benchmark test app on Google Play

Download 3DMark from the Google Play store

3DMark is also available for Windows PCs and is coming soon to Apple iOS and Windows RT devices.