Firefox for Android beta: A good first effort

From CNET News.com: The first beta of Firefox 4 for Android arrived Thursday, offering users of Google's mobile operating system a browser interface with both smart new features and some weaknesses.

Mozilla is trying to reach the fast-growing and increasingly important mobile world with its "Fennec" version of Firefox. Android is the second operating system it supports after Maemo, which comes with Nokia's N900, which is as much a small computer as smartphone. Today, that market is dominated by browsers based on the open-source WebKit project, including those built into iOS, Android, WebOS, and Bada browsers and coming with BlackBerry OS.

Android is critical to Mozilla's mobile effort: with Apple blocking typical browsers for iOS devices, Google's operating system is the best remaining avenue to mainstream mobile relevance.

Unlike most Android applications, Firefox is native software that runs on the underlying Linux operating system and ARM processor rather than Android's higher-level Java-like foundation (now the subject of Oracle's lawsuit against Google). That native nature means Firefox compatibility is a more finicky issue: you'll have to check the supported devices list, which so far includes four tested phones and five untested.

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