Firefox Mobile 14 for Android is here
Mozilla last week announced big things coming to Firefox for Android in a Twitter message without revealing too much about what they meant by that. Today, Mozilla has released the next version of Firefox for Android that is faster and more powerful than the previously available app for the operating system.
Firefox for Android has been redesigned to improve the browser's performance on Android devices. According to Mozilla, this makes the browser faster than the stock browsers that ship with android phones. Mozilla even created a new benchmark that it says measures "actual user Web experience". In this benchmark, Firefox renders nearly twice as many frames per second than Opera or Chrome for Android, and three times the fps of the previous Firefox version for Android, the Dolphin browser, and the default Android browser.
The browser features a personalized start page that is displaying top sites, a speed dial like feature to access often used sites with a single tap of the finger. Firefox desktop users may be interested that the Android version is now supporting Firefox Sync, Mozilla's data synchronization service, as it is now possible to synchronize bookmarks, passwords, the browsing history and form data between Firefox for Android and desktop versions of the web browser.
Firefox for Android users can also install add-ons in the mobile browser, and access Flash contents on Android. As far as accessing contents that require plugins go, Mozilla has implemented a tap-to-play feature to block plugin contents from loading automatically when the sites they are embedded on are accessed.
From a security standpoint, desktop features such as Do Not Track or the Master Password have been integrated into the mobile browser to improve the overall security of it on the mobile phone.
Lastly, the developers have improved the browser's HTML5, JavaScript, CSS and open web standards capabilities.Android users who are interested in trying out the new version of Firefox for their mobile operating system find the download in the Google Play Store. The full release notes are available on this page.
Firefox for Android is compatible with Android 2.1 and above devices. The software requires 17 Megabytes of storage, and at least 512 Megabytes of RAM on the device.
Have you tried the new Firefox Mobile 14 browser for Android yet? If so, what is your impression, especially in comparison to other browsers that you may have used or tested on the device?
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I’ve been using this version of the UI since the very first nightly came out. It has come a long way, and I can verify on my phone (SGSII), the tests they did, and the claims they say, are the same results I see. Oh, and don’t forget, it has native FLASH! Good job Mozilla you have me as a default Firefox user!
When is Firefox coming to Symbian OS, Mozilla?
yeee, although I have only ‘dumb’-phone, if I want to get a smart-phone – it’ll be android, only because of that
And compatabilty for my two tablets seems to have disappeared. My phones are ok, but both ASUS and Samsung tablets (on which the older version is installed) don’t allow installation now.
Interesting.
In any case, the last version sucked the backside of a mule. Frequent crashes, flash plugin issues (and these ones not caused by Adobe), some pages with serious load time issues.
Love Firefox for the desktop – for Android it’s almost unusable.
A browser that opens every link in overview mode, with no settings to change that is a browser I won’t bother with. The same unbelievable design choice repeated in every FF release.
Firefox, for when you absolutely insist on double tapping every page.
Still no support for my Galaxy Gio, possibly because of ARMv6 CPU and/or low screen resolution.
So I have to stay with Opera Mobile here – it is way faster than standard onboard browser.
arrgh the double tapping needed for every page link is driving me insane on firefox. but it is fast. how do you change this tapping setting? the other thing i hate is the mobile setting its better on my android tablet to use desktop setting for reading Wikipedia or newspaper sites. all in all the startup page for firefox beta needs to point out how you alter these çritical settings.
They have come a long way since the first few nightlies, but I’m still partial to Opera on my phone.
Thanks for the information, is very helpful for users of Android gadgets, especially gadgets.