Mozilla is taking another stab at mobile browsing with a new version of Firefox on Android. We’ve been playing around with the recently released early-access public build for this new Firefox, currently known as “Firefox Preview,” and now we’re here to fill you in everything you need to know about it—how fast it is, how secure it is, and the best new features we’ve found.
Why is Mozilla making a new Firefox Android app?
Firefox has a sizable niche carved out of the desktop browser market, but it remains woefully underrepresented in the mobile space. Part of that is because of Chrome’s default near-ubiquity on Android, but even Mozilla admits that Firefox mobile could be much better.
Rather than attempt to drastically change the current mobile app’s course, Mozilla opted to start over with an all-new Firefox app. This new Firefox is built on the GeckoView open-source mobile browser software, which Mozilla claims makes Firefox Preview up to twice as fast as the previous Firefox Mobile version, and brings many of the same privacy-protecting features of the desktop version to mobile.
We’ve spent some quality time with the new Firefox Preview to see if Mozilla’s claims hold any water, and find out for ourselves just how much different this new Firefox actually is.
How Firefox Preview performs
Firefox Preview’s core functionality is identical to any other mobile browser—you can open and juggle between multiple tabs, there’s a private mode, and you can perform quick searches in the URL bar from your preferred search engine (which can be set during setup and changed in the settings menu). Firefox veterans can sign in and sync their bookmarks, browsing history, and other settings (depending on your sync settings, of course), but the differences between Firefox Mobile and Firefox Preview quickly become apparent.
New interface
One thing everyone will notice is the sleeker interface. Firefox Preview has a much more trimmed-down and focused UI compared to Firefox Mobile. It’s much easier to jump immediately to a page, and the homepage is free of recommended articles and other clutter that make Firefox Mobile feel cramped. The new, trim navigation bar has been moved to the bottom of the app screen, and stays stays mostly out of the way while your scrolling and reading a page. It’s more like using a browser in reader-mode, in that regard.