Mozilla releases native version of Firefox for Android
Browser builder Mozilla has released a native version of Firefox for Android. The mobile browser supports Flash and, according to Mozilla, is faster than the competition, while tests show the opposite.
The new version of Firefox for Android has been released in Google’s download store Play Store. The update for the browser has a new interface, which is more in line with what is standard on Android. For example, the Action Bar is supported under Android 4.0, under which options can be found. There is also support for the do-not-track function, which is also in the desktop version.
Tabs are managed via the button next to the combined url search bar. Clicking on that will bring down a dropdown with thumbnails and titles of all tabs. They can be closed with a cross on the left.
The browser appears to work fine and much better than its predecessor, but there are some downsides. For example, he regularly has trouble with fonts, and for example, the breadcrumbs at the top are displayed much larger than the text of an article. Firefox also gives a small vibration by default when clicking a url. This is not the case in other browsers and it will differ per user whether this is experienced as pleasant.
Mozilla claims that the browser is faster than other browsers on Android, such as the default browser and Chrome. Mozilla does this on the basis of two benchmarks: its own benchmark and Sunspider. The latter only measures performance in Javascript.
It seems that Firefox is optimized for Sunspider; where Firefox is marginally faster in that benchmark and scores 1337 milliseconds on the Galaxy S III, in other benchmarks the browser is much slower than the standard browser and Chrome. For example, it loads a static front page significantly slower than the other browsers. On BrowserMark, the score is roughly half that of other browsers.
Load static front page (automatic)Milliseconds (lower is better)
| Chrome – Galaxy S III | **** 0.29 |
| Default Browser – Galaxy S III | ***** 0.34 |
| Chrome – HTC One X | ****** 0.42 |
| Firefox – Galaxy S III | ******** 0.54 |
| Default browser – HTC One X | ******** 0.58 |
| Firefox – HTC One X | ********* 0.72 |
browser markPoints (higher is better)
| Default Browser – Galaxy S III | ********* 167667 |
| Chrome – Galaxy S III | ********* 143348 |
| Chrome – HTC One X | ******* 112173 |
| Default browser – HTC One X | ****** 105958 |
| Firefox – Galaxy S III | ***** 77072 |
| Firefox – HTC One X | *** 55174 |
sun spiderMilliseconds (lower is better)
| Firefox – Galaxy S III | ******* 1337 |
| Chrome – Galaxy S III | ******* 1339 |
| Default Browser – Galaxy S III | ******** 1429 |
| Firefox – HTC One X | ********* 1686 |
| Default browser – HTC One X | ********* 1708 |
| Chrome – HTC One X | ********* 1851 |