While Firefox for Android isnt really new, this update brings to the mobile/tablet their latest iteration in the form of Firefox 6. Now on parallel development as with its desktop counterpart, syncing of bookmarks and recently visited websites promises to be a very simple and hassle free experience.
Trying it out the first few minutes was already a joyful experience. In a tablet environment with a big screen, the new optimizations allow for better viewing and a faster page rendering for websites. The address bar automatically hides when browsing long pages allowing the whole screen to be filled up with the site content. swiping to the right reveals all the currently open windows and swiping to the left gives you the option to quickly bookmark and access the settings panel. There is also an undo button if accidentally you close a tab that you were working on, although there is just one level, it is still a pretty useful function. The settings page follows a very familiar Honeycomb-esque style and navigating it feels right at home with buttons clearly optimized for touch interface.
Firefox 6 for Android does not support flash and while that is not really an ideal browser feature, it does make for speedy rendering of pages 100% of the time. I was hoping to find some sort of ‘desktop mode’ which would trick the website into displaying the full version instead on the mobile ones but there was no such feature.
Prior to the installation of Firefox into my device I was already using 4 mobile browsers namely the Asus System Default, Dolphin HD, Dolphin for Pad, and Opera Mobile; Firefox feels like an aggregate of all of the good things among the browsers on the list and is quickly turning out to be my browser of choice.
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