Out-foxing Google
Open-source web browser Mozilla has taken the next step to becoming a player in the mobile space with the release of the beta version of its mobile browser.
Codenamed Fennec, Firefox 4 beta for mobile arrives less than two months after the alpha was released, includes features such as Firefox Sync which, if you have the same feature installed on your desktop Firefox, allows you to sync your settings, bookmarks, etc.
The release is for Android and Maemo, which given the latter has been obsolete for almost a year and Nokia N900 sales didn't exactly break records, effectively means Android. But Android already has a browser, and Google is presumably going to try hard to ensure users use its one, so Firefox is going to have to demonstrate some strong and unique features if it's going to compete.
We suspect this sync feature will be the most prominent one. We downloaded the beta onto our Android phone and soon realised it look up a lot of room. At time of writing, having embarked on the syncing process, Firefox uses 43.61MB. To put that into context Google maps accounts for 9MB and Twitter 6MB. To make room for it we had to uninstall another bloaty app - Skype - but even that was only 13MB or so.
The syncing is still underway, so we can't yet report on how it went, but one tip: don't lose your sync key (memorable phrase) because it's not easy to recover. But our first impression, especially given the size of the (admittedly still beta) file, is that there's not a lot of point of having both the Google browser and Firefox on your phone unless you really want to sync.
The Mozilla blog says the major focus of this release is performance and responsiveness, facilitated by the Electrolysis and Layers features of the architecture. There is full multitouch support and the release notes highlight the following groovy things:
- Get Up and Go
- Add-ons
- Personalized Start Page
- Awesome Screen
- Touch Friendly UI
- Responsiveness
