Morpheme launches benchmark tool for mobile handsets

A new application launched by UK mobile game developer Morpheme, MorphMark, promises to provide a standard benchmark for measuring the gaming performance of a wide variety of mobile phone devices.

The benchmarking tool runs a variety of tests on Java enabled handsets which provide a solid indication of the device's ability to run videogames and other graphically intensive applications, and provides a score which uses Nokia's 7650 handset as the baseline.

"MorphMark was developed in-house for our own purposes," according to Morpheme managing director Matt Spall. "It's crucial that we know which phones can run games well. MorphMark tells us quickly and accurately."

"Several companies are now talking to us about using MorphMark under license or alternatively, commissioning us to run tests for them, which is an interesting new dimension to our existing business," he continued. "It's early days but with MorphMark we're confident that we can establish a standard platform for J2ME device performance testing."

Such a system would be hugely useful to mobile developers, content aggregators and even hardware platform manufacturers, as it would enable them to identify handsets which were not providing optimum user experiences for games, and to rectify some of these problems with software updates.

Morpheme, which is one of the Argonaut Games group of studios, is planning to use the software to carry out tests on behalf of a range of customers including operators, software and hardware platform providers and distributors, as well as licensing the tool to interested parties.