A recently published support document highlights Mozilla’s plans for the current Firefox for Android and also Fenix.
Mozilla’s main idea is to maintain the legacy version of Firefox for Android until Fenix reaches migration readiness status. Firefox users on Android should be able to use the legacy version until Fenix is ready while Mozilla wants to minimize support costs.
Fenix currently does not support extensions just yet, so I’ll be staying on the regular Firefox for Android until that has been addressed.
Actually it already seems to block ads and that is the only extension I used on FireFox for android before… I’m going to give it a try for a few days and see if it stays as fast as it is now or if it ends up bogging down after use.
Have you built it by yourself or is an oficial build available?
Does it support firefox sync?
You can get the official builds (only nightlies so far) from APK mirror.
I think it does support sync but I haven’t tried it.
This is the official mozilla build you have to select the correct build for your phone architecture (new phones are typically aarch64:
https://tools.taskcluster.net/index/project.mobile.fenix.signed-nightly.nightly/latest
History sync was supported and since yesterday’s build also Bookmarks sync
Built in tracking protection does a good job in general with adds but can’t replace ublock Origin. For me the trade-off between MUCH MUCH better performance and better blocking is worth it, I use Fenix as my default browser already and I can live with that until after the first release when they’ll integrate extension support
PS. Enabling webrender on Fenix via about:config provides even better performance if possible, really amazing work on the performance front by Mozilla here
When password sync appears I am in!
I don’t understand why Mozilla would make a new, mobile-only, browser (and in the process confuse users with a new brand). Also, I don’t understand why Mozilla has 3 mobile browsers at the same time: Firefox, Firefox Focus and Fenix.
Current firefox for android is called fennec but the brand communicated to users is still firefox. Similar I don’t find it likely that fenix will be released as a separate browser called “fenix” but rather just replace the current firefox when it’s ready. Fenix is much smoother than firefox for android ever was so I suppose there are some issues with the old architecture preventing them from taking it further.
Firefox for Android (aka Fennec) has a number of technical limitations stemming from its design that made it almost impossible to modernize it. For starters it’s the only version of Firefox that does not support running web pages in separate processes, it’s still a monolithic affair. Fenix and Focus on the other hand are built out of a collection of modularized components that are shared and are designed to be reused by other projects. This allows a lot of flexibility in the implementation of Fenix which will surely end up as a much faster browser than Fennec ever was.
(disclaimer: I work for Mozilla)
Just to chime in: I’ve tried Firefox Focus and it’s a lot faster than the Firefox I was using before.
If you look at thier roadmap, the goal is to make Fenix the default Firefox for Android sometime around 2020 if not before…. but they are going to maintain current firefox for Android until it’s ready for prime time.
I can’t wait. I prefer Firefox over Chrome on Andriod, but it can be slow (Though, uBlock Mobile helps a lot).
A major speed boost is what I’m waiting for!