Firefox 4 Android beta brings Sync, speed improvements
updated 07:55 pm EST, Wed February 2, 2011
Beta available for Android and Maemo devices
Mozilla has released a public beta of its Firefox 4 mobile browser for Maemo- and Android-based handsets. The latest version boasts faster startup, page load times and responsiveness while performing basic actions such as panning and zooming. Compared to the stock Android browser, Firefox 4's JavaScript benchmark performance is said to be three times faster on Kraken, twice as fast on SunSpider and slightly quicker on V8.
Aside from the speed improvements, users can also take advantage of 100 add-ons in the Mobile Add-ons Gallery, along with Firefox Sync integration for shared history, bookmarks, open tabs and passwords from multiple computers and mobile devices.
The Firefox 4 mobile beta is available as a free download directly from Mozilla.
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Joined: Jul 2007
won't run on all phone
The latest beta won't run on all Android phones. For instance, it crashes on start-up on my Acer Liquid E. There's a known bug, with a patch just proposed that may solve the problem in an upcoming beta. See the thread below for more info, or use Beta 3 instead.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=606194