Good news, everyone! Firefox is officially available for Maemo devices, like the Nokia N900!
What’s that you say? Firefox has been available for Maemo for a while now? Sure, but now it’s official.
Now, that’s not to say that the past releases were “unofficial”; they were just “Release Candidates”, which is sort of a fancy way of saying “really, really late stage Betas that are probably good enough to release”. That means that if you’re already using Firefox Mobile (otherwise known by its codename, “Fennec”), you’re probably not going to notice anything new in this release – but if you were waiting until the development team thought it was ready for public consumption, now’s the time to jump.
Maemo may not be the most obvious choice of platforms to launch on, but it’s one that Mozilla could develop on quickly and without restriction. This release serves as a nice little sneak peak at what to expect as it rolls out to other platforms (such as Android, which I’m hearing should see its first signs of Firefox Mobile in the next month or two).
So what makes Firefox Mobile worthwhile? We’ll let Mozilla do the talking:
- Awesome Bar – Go to your favorite sites in just a couple of keystrokes with intelligent and personalized searching
- Weave Sync – Sync your Firefox tabs, history, bookmarks and passwords between your desktop and mobile device for a seamless browsing experience
- Add-ons – Customize your Firefox by adding small pieces of functionality, like games and news readers, that help make the mobile Web browser your own
- Location-Aware Browsing – Get maps and information relevant to your location
- Tabbed browsing – View open tabs as thumbnails to easily identify and select the Web page you’d like to go to next
- Safe Browsing – Get an Instant Web Site ID and easily access and edit security settings
- Available in more than 30 languages and counting
So what do you think? If Firefox for Mobile came to your platform of choice, think you’d make the switch? Let us know in the comments below.
I’ve used the Nokia N800 for years. Initially the Opera browser was sufficient but that day has long passed. It’s nice to see a browser that hopefully will be more functional for Maemo and just Possibly kept up to date.
Here’s a few pics of Firefox Mobile running on Nokia N900
http://www.livbit.com/article/2010/01/30/firefox-for-mobile-is-finally-released-starts-with-nokia-n900/
Maemo’s own browser is so great that I don’t entirely see me using this. Especially as Fennec seems to be so slow always (or Maemos MicroB so freakin fast?)
Greg Kumparak,
You sir are a dick!
That headline was highly misleading, due some 49% to the fact that Ive been waiting and waiting for Firefox Mobile to finally be available for anything but a Nokia device.
So that leaves 51% to you for that headline shenanigans!
Seriously thought I cant wait to have it on my wMobile phone.
already installed the firefox browser, its really cool with the add ons and everything.
firefox has always been my choice on the desktop but as maemo’s microB is so amazing, am still using it mostly
Mozilla firefox is one among the best browsers ever! Was just waiting for them to release the mobile version! It ll be really cool.. I have found some more info on firefox browser.. I have posted it on my blog.. Make sure you do check it..
http://dtechwiz.blogspot.com/2010/02/power-of-firefox-browser-now-in-your.html