Mozilla has once again updated their Firefox for Mobile browser, this time to version 4 beta 5. It’s available for Android 2.0 and higher devices as well as Nokia’s Maemo running N900. The change-log promises speed improvements in page rendering, startup time, scrolling, and it should also take up less RAM, though Mozilla does recommend your device have 512 MB of memory. Jay Sullivan, Vice President of Products, told IDG News Service at Mobile World Congress that Firefox 4 for Android will ship in a few weeks, so this may very well be the last beta before it ultimately becomes “final”.
If the Mozilla guys had a booth at Mobile World Congress I must’ve missed it, but I did get a chance to see what Opera was working on, and it was damn impressive. Both Opera and Mozilla offer browsers that tie into your dekstop browsing experience in a way that the stock Android browser can only dream of. We’re talking full syncing of bookmarks, passwords, cookies, even extensions should you want to have the same additional functionality both on your computer and smartphone. There are already over 100 extensions available for Firefox Mobile, and that number is expected to blow up once it exits beta status.
If you want to fiddle around with this app then just point your browser to the Android Market and hit install. Note that if you visit sites with Flash (what’s wrong with you?) then they’re not going to work in this browser. You’ll have to rely on the stock browser for that. Let us know what you think about the latest beta in the comments below. We still think that the native browser is the best and that it’ll be a while until third parties can out perform Google when it comes to building a faster browser.
[Via: Android Central]
