Qualcomm Vellamo 2 benchmark now available on Google Play

Qualcomm's Vellamo 2 benchmark is now available for download at Google's Play store. This benchmark began its life as an internal HTML5 performance test tool but eventually grew so big that Qualcomm decided to make it publicly available. The new release improved upon the previous version by offering a HTML5 test plus a CPU performance benchmark.

Vellamo 2 also features a touch responsiveness test, a high-bandwidth video benchmark and a JavaScript V8 performance benchmark, but these tests don't quire work on all devices yet.

Bright Side of News tested the benchmark and reports its a big stride forward. Whether the test is objective enough remains a question, but the site noted that Tegra 3 managed to beta Snapdragon S4 in some tests so Qualcomm seems to be trying to remain impartial.

Vellamo is now a two part benchmark that focuses on HTML5 for the first 'chapter' and then CPU performance in the second 'chapter'. We believe that Qualcomm wanted to show the importance of the CPU in the benchmarking process as well as show off some of their new Krait CPU improvements that they've made with their new S4 class processors. The main additions to Vellamo are the addition of a WebGL Jellyfish benchmark, an inline video benchmark, and a Load and Reload benchmark that simulates 3G and 4G connections using a built-in web server.

The second chapter, known as 'Metal', is a series of different CPU benchmarks including a Dhrystone test, a LINPACK test, a Branch-K test, a stream 5.9 test, a RAMJam test and a Storage test. The first three tests are self explanatory as they are generally standard tests, with the Branch-K test testing the benching ability of the CPU with some memory bandwidth calls. The stream 5.9 test is a memory bandwidth test mostly for testing the memory bandwidth of the system based upon the controller and memory installed, which may vary from phone to phone. The RAMJam is also mostly self explanatory explaining what the peak performance of the memory controller is rather than what the onboard memory itself is capable of. The storage benchmark is also an important one to us, perhaps much less relevant to the CPU, but still very important to the whole system's performance as it tests the I/O operations and the actual read and write speeds of the storage which can determine load times, etc.