Futuremark have announced the availability of their benchmarking software for Series 60 smartphones - SPMark™04. Futuremark, well known for their 3DMark PC benchmarking program, have released a program thats runs a series of comprehensive benchmarking tests on the phone. We'll be using the software in future reviews to compare phone performance.

As increasing numbers of phone become available and they increase in complexity benchmarking allows for realistic comparison between phones.

Press Release:
Futuremark® Corporation Launches SPMark™04 Smartphone Benchmark

Enables objective comparisons between popular Symbian based smartphones


Saratoga, CA – July 7, 2004 –Futuremark Corporation, the leading provider of computer performance analysis software and services, announced today its release of SPMark™04, the world’s first industry-grade benchmark for Symbian based smartphones.

SPMark™04 provides a comprehensive application for measuring and comparing the performance and power consumption of the increasingly complex mobile platforms. It is a great benefit to the industry by allowing consumers, media, retailers, and operators to objectively compare handsets between each other. SPMark™04 also enables handset manufacturers reliably evaluate and compare various semiconductor implementations.

The benchmark has been developed in collaboration with key industry partners, including ATI Technologies, Bitboys, Imagination Technologies (PowerVR), Intel, Khronos Group, Neomagic, and NVIDIA under Futuremark’s Benchmark Development Program for Smartphones.

“The application performance of a smartphone is an increasingly important criterion for consumers in their purchasing decision process”, said Tero Sarkkinen, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Futuremark. “Before SPMark™04, there simply was no standard tool with which to make objective comparisons. Being the worldwide leader in benchmark technologies, we are committed to establish SPMark™04 to be the most comprehensive testing tool for mobile platforms ", he continued.

SPMark™04 measures the performance and power efficiency of Symbian based smartphones and includes visually stunning 3D game play test using the OpenGL ES graphics API. For handsets without hardware OpenGL ES implementation, the benchmark includes Hybrid Graphics' OpenGL ES API Implementation.

Symbian is a software licensing company owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Panasonic, Psion, Samsung Electronics, Siemens and Sony Ericsson. The company supplies the Symbian OS open standards operating system for data-enabled mobile phones. Currently available products based on Symbian OS include the Motorola A920 and A925, Sendo X, Siemens SX1, FOMA F2102V, F2051 and F900i, Sony Ericsson P800 and P900, as well as the Nokia 7610, 7650, 6600, 3650/3600, 3660/3620 N-Gage/N-Gage QD and Nokia Communicators 9210, 9290.

Key Features of SPMark™04:

* Supports handsets with Symbian 6 and 7 operating systems and Series60 or UIQ user interface(*;
* Comprehensive test suite to measure overall system performance and power consumption;
* OpenGL ES 3D tests (3D game play, 3D fill rate, 3D polygon throughput);
* Image processing tests (2D image, image scaling, JPEG encoding);
* General usage tests (contacts, calendar, disk access)



Pricing and Availability
SPMark™04 is immediately available in two versions: a Business Edition ($250) and a Developer’s Edition ($6,000 + programming) at Futuremark’s secure web store at http://www.futuremark.com/products/spmark04/.

(* Consumer versions and UIQ support will be made available in the 3rd quarter of 2004.

About Futuremark® Corporation
Futuremark® Corporation is the leading provider of computer performance analysis software and services. Futuremark® is known around the world for its benchmark products, including the 3DMark® Series and PCMark™ (with more than 30 million copies distributed worldwide) and value-added services powered by a database of over 10 million real life benchmarking results. Futuremark® has offices in Saratoga, California and Helsinki, Finland. For more information, please visit http://www.futuremark.com.