New Firefox for Android Beta supports more devices

A new Reader Mode and more device support are the leading features of the newly released beta of Firefox for Android 16, the open source mobile web browser. The extended device support in the new "experimental" build is based around its ability to run on smartphones that use an older ARMv6 processor architecture; the current stable branch of Firefox for Android only supports hardware with an ARMv7 processor.

According to Mozilla's Karen Rudnitski, the developers are planning to further expand the minimum set of requirements needed to run Firefox for Android. This is part of a "phased approach" to allow more users to run the app. To start, various ARMv6-based devices with at least 512MB of RAM and CPUs running at 800MHZ or faster are being supported; this includes popular Android smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy Pro GT-B7510, the HTC Status and Motorola's XT531. A list of devices that have been tested and found to be compatible with the beta is provided on the Firefox Mobile site.

The beta also introduces a new Reader Mode that converts the format of a page to make it easier to read on a smaller screen; users can activate Reader Mode by selecting the book icon next to the URL entry field. Other changes include the ability to send tabs to other devices over Firefox Sync via the "Share" menu and improvements to JavaScript responsiveness through incremental garbage collection. As in the desktop beta of Firefox 16, the Mozilla prefixes have been removed from CSS3 Animations, Transitions and Transforms because they are now stable CSS features. Users testing the release are asked to provide feedback and report any bugs that they find.

More details about this beta, including a list of known issues, can be found in the announcement blog post and in the release notes. Firefox for Android 16.0 Beta is available to download from the Google Play store for devices running Android 2.2 or later. The current stable release of Firefox for Android is version 15.0.1 from 10 September.

See also:

• New FoxBrowser for iPad talks Firefox Sync, a report from The H.
• Firefox 15 for desktop and Android released, a report from The H.
• First stable version of Chrome for Android released, a report from The H.

(crve)