Firefox on Android Has Been Spotted
Saturday, 06 February 2010 06:53 | Written by Barry Carey | 
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We found something pretty amazing today while browsing around online. They guys over at webmonkey.com are reporting that Mozilla is working on a full blown version of Firefox for Android. I found this to be a great surprise seeing how I have used Firefox a lot over the years.
But the jump onto the Android platform may not be an easy fight.
There are several alterative browsers currently floating around in the Android Market right now that work very well. An example of this would be Dolphin Browser which cornered the market by offering multi-touch zooming with no root or modifications required. So Mozilla is stepping into a field that already has some big contenders. That's not to mention the stock browser, built by Google, which gained a major advantage with the drop of Google's ERE27 update which enabled multi-touch zooming as a built in feature. So it goes without saying that the Android browser field has has good contenders that won't go away easily.
The image below was posted by Vladmir Vukicevic of Mozilla and they show Firefox being run on an Android emulator. Although he also stated they have been successful in launching it on a device as well.
One thing that is also very notable is the fact that it doesn't look like the normal Fennec/Firefox Mobile seen on other types of devices. As you can see from the image it appears to be the full version of Firefox running as you would see it on your computer. According to Vukicevic this is being done due the complexity of the full interface. If they are able to successfully port the full version to Android than the mobile version will be no problem. One would also assume Mozilla is doing this to enable an easy jump from smart phones to Android based tablets and Netbooks. From what we can see, it looks great and I'm sure many of you would love to give it a try. But we still have a ways to go before that happens. This early version shown here is very far from complete or functional so we can expect a pretty substaintal time before we see any public alpha releases.
All in all it's good to see Mozilla is making an effort to jump into Android but many believe it might be too late to gain any major market share. As you probably know Mozilla has been taking a beating in the desktop ring with the browser worlds newest contender, Google Chrome. This has been esspicially true since Google now offers extensions to be installed on the browser.
I used to be a diehard Firefox user even though I really liked Chrome. The major thing that kept me from making the full jump was the lack of extensions in Chrome. However, since Google has implemented extensions I have jumped ship from Firefox and I'm now a full time Chrome user with no plans of looking back.
What do you guys think about Firefox coming to Android? Are you happing with the Android browsers already floating around or are you giddy to know Firefox is coming to the green side?
Let's us know what you think in the comments and don't hold back.
Last Updated (Tuesday, 09 February 2010 20:00)