Firefox 4 beta available for Android

Mozilla, makers of the popular Firefox web browser, have made available Firefox 4 beta for mobile for the Android platform. The app is built on the same technology as its desktop counterpart, with the main focus of this release on “performance and responsiveness”.

There are a lot of recognisable features like Firefox Sync, Add-ons, and the Awesome Bar that make the app sound impressive. Firefox Sync saves browsing history, bookmarks, tabs, passwords and form-fill data and makes these available across all of your computers and Android devices.

The app also includes pinch-to-zoom and the Awesome Screen, which gives instant access to recent history, bookmarks, and tabs when you tap the Awesome Bar.

According to Stuart Parmenter, Director of mobile at Mozilla, Firefox 4 beta for mobile is a “significant step forward in sharing a personalized, seamless and encrypted Web experience across devices”.

The app is still in beta so is only available for direct download from the Mozilla website. As a mobile app the download is quite large at 40Mb, although this figure will likely decrease substantially in the production release.

You can check out this video walkthrough of Firefox 4 beta for mobile from YouTube user SmartKeitai: