Futuremark launches new PCMark benchmark tests for Android devices

If you've been searching for an alternative to popular Android benchmark apps like GFXBench, Geekbench, or AnTuTu, you'll be pleased to know that Futuremark has just outed a new version of its very complex PCMark benchmark application.

PCMark for Android has been around for quite a long time, but developer Futuremark announced the new version 2.0 adds two new benchmark test, which are based on real-world activities. In addition, users will now be able to compare the performance devices across Android OS version updates.

But let's start with the most important new benchmark test included in the update, Work 2.0. As the name suggests, this is an improved version of the previous Work benchmark, which tests the performance and battery life of an Android device.

Work 2.0 comes with two brand new tests for Video Editing and Data Manipulation, but also enhanced versions of the Web Browsing, Writing, and Photo Editing tests. On a side note, Futuremark states that the older Work test is still available withing the PCMark app if you want to use that one instead.

The next new benchmark test included in the latest version of PCMark is called Computer Vision. It measures device performance for multiple image recognition tasks while using some popular open-source libraries like TensorFlow, ZXing and Tesseract.

As mentioned earlier, PCMark 2.0 enables users to see how major Android OS updates affect a device's overall performance. Also, the newest version of the benchmark app allows comparisons between phones and tablets, and it adds the option to filter the scores by Android OS version.