Futuremark Adds Comprehensive Storage Test To PCMark For Android

Futuremark has just updated its PCMark test suite for Android with a new feature: storage testing. While storage might not sound that important overall, it is. Even if you have one of the fastest SoCs inside of your smartphone, slow storage can make it feel like a low-end device. Futuremark wants to prevent people from purchasing such devices in the first place, because it’s not just storage space that matters, it’s storage speed.

Rather than integrate storage testing into the main PCMark ‘Work’ test, Futuremark has decided to keep it separate, as a stand-alone test. This allows those who only want to run the storage test to do so, and those who need to re-run one of the two tests to also do so without wasting too much time.

PCMark’s new storage test doesn’t just thrash the internal storage with reads and writes, it also tests the external storage. Further, and perhaps of greatest importance, SQLite database performance is also tested. Why that’s important is because most of our apps will directly interact with such a database, so if it’s slow, it stands to reason that the app itself will be, too.

Straight from Futuremark’s virtual mouth:

Internal Storage is where your apps save private data such as settings and user data. The Android default cache directory is also in the internal storage. Files saved in internal storage are private to the application and cannot be accessed by the user or other applications. Internal storage performance most commonly impacts the startup time and smooth running of your apps.

External Storage is used to save public data such as documents, photos, videos, and other files, as well as non-sensitive app data such as textures and sounds. Depending on the device, external storage can be removable, (such as an SD card), or built-in. Files in external storage can be found and modified by the user. External Storage performance most commonly impacts your experience when loading and viewing media files such as photos and videos.

Both tests measure the performance of the storage for random read, sequential read, random write, and sequential write operations.

The Database test measures performance when reading, updating, inserting and deleting database records using SQLite, the default relational database management system in Android. Following default Android behavior, the test database is saved in the device’s internal storage.

It seems likely that we’ll introduce this storage test into our regular suite of mobile tests. If you want to test your own device, you could grab the benchmark for free here. If you’re a bit technical and want to dive into the underbelly of the benchmark, you can peruse the technical guide here (PDF).