Mozilla has released its new Firefox 14 for Android and promises a variety of new things, including new HTML5 capabilities and the quickest web browsing for Android to date.
For developers, the new browser will allow enhanced creation of rich web apps and websites based on the HTML5 standards, as well as CSS and Java.
Flash is also supported on Firefox 14, which is an interesting decision because of Flash’s general allergy to mobile devices; yet some of the previous bugs have been fixed, such as full screen now working correctly on Flash.
Similarly, Mozilla continues to work on a series of application programming interfaces (APIs), with the company helping to build Camera API, Mobile Connection API and Vibration API among others.
This latest incarnation of Firefox for Android is the fastest browser for Android by some distance.
Tested on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.0.4, Firefox 14 rendered 39.3 frames per second. This is three times the amount of the previous Firefox, and streets ahead of the nearest competitors Opera (21.6) and Google’s Chrome (19.6).
Mozilla’s official blog effused: “As a pioneer of the Web, Mozilla unlocked the Web experience on the desktop and we are doing it again in mobile” and called the new Firefox for Android “a snappy and dynamic upgrade to mobile browsing that makes it faster and easier to get where you want to go on the Web”.
It has to be noted here that the software Mozilla used to determine canvas rendering performance, Eideticker, was developed by Mozilla themselves, so a top ranking result might have been somewhat inevitable.
Yet the statistics still make for impressive reading, with the new Firefox for Android undeniably quick. Is speed the most important aspect of the browsing experience?
