Mozilla releases Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo devices

Mozilla has just unveiled the Firefox 4 Beta for devices based on the Android and the Maemo platforms. As before, the mobile version of the browser uses the same platform as the desktop one and it is optimized for mobile browsing.

The Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo rely on a couple of major architecture improvements - Electrolysis and Layers. Those should make the browser much more responsive and is expected to improve both the performance and the graphics (including scrolling, zooming, animations).

By the way, pinch-zooming is supported too (as long as the device you're using supports it as well). There is still no support for Flash, though, even on Android 2.2 Froyo smartphones.

Of course, many features inherited from the desktop version of Firefox (such as the Firefox Sync, the Awesome bar or the support for add-ons) are on board as well.

Firefox 4 Beta running on Samsung Galaxy S

The Firefox Sync helps you easily keep your browsing history, bookmarks, tabs, passwords and form-fill data in sync with those on your computer. All the data is encrypted, of course.

As for the Add-ons support, developers can now start building new ones using technologies like HTML5, CSS or JavaScript.

And here is what the team standing behind the Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo devices has to say about the new beta:

If you want to give the newly launched Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Meamo a try, just follow that link. Keep in mind that it will only run on Meamo-based devices (Nokia N900) as well as on devices powered by Android v2.0 or higher.

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