{"id":2156,"date":"2019-06-27T17:05:54","date_gmt":"2019-06-27T16:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/press-uk\/?p=2156"},"modified":"2019-06-27T17:09:44","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T16:09:44","slug":"reinventing-firefox-for-android-a-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/press-uk\/2019\/06\/27\/reinventing-firefox-for-android-a-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"Reinventing Firefox for Android: a Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Vesta Zare<\/p>\n

At Firefox, we\u2019re passionate about providing solutions for people who care about safety, privacy and independence. For several months, we\u2019ve been working on a new strategy for our Android products to serve you even better. Today we\u2019re very happy to announce a pilot of our new browser for Android devices that is available to early adopters for testing as of now<\/a>. We\u2019ll have a feature-rich, polished version of this flagship application available for this fall.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Firefox Preview — our new mobile flagship app for Android<\/i><\/p>\n

Always-on, always private: a new and improved mobile Firefox<\/b><\/p>\n

Unlike Big Tech, which only recently started to put more emphasis on privacy<\/a>, we launched Firefox Focus<\/a> about two and a half years ago, a mobile browser for iOS and Android that allows you to discover the web without being followed around by trackers. While continuously improving Firefox Focus over time, we realised that users demanded a fully-fledged mobile browsing experience, but one that\u2019s more private and secure than any existing app. So we decided to make Firefox more like Focus, but with all the ease and amenities of a full-featured mobile browser. The result is an early version of what we currently call Firefox Preview<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bringing Firefox Quantum performance to mobile, with GeckoView<\/b><\/p>\n

With Firefox Preview, we\u2019re combining the best of what our lightweight Focus application and our current mobile browsers have to offer to create a best in class mobile experience. The new application is powered by Firefox’s own mobile browser engine — GeckoView — the same high-performance, feature enabling motor that fuels our Focus app<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You might remember how we revamped the engine behind the Firefox desktop browser in 2017 enabling us to significantly improve the desktop user experience. As a result, today\u2019s Firefox Quantum<\/a> is much faster, more efficient, equipped with a modern user interface and clearly the next-gen Firefox. Quite similarly, implementing GeckoView paves the way for a complete makeover of the mobile Firefox experience. While all other major Android browsers today are based on Blink and therefore reflective of Google’s decisions about mobile, Firefox\u2019s GeckoView engine ensures us and our users independence. Building Firefox for Android on GeckoView also results in greater flexibility in terms of the types of privacy and security features we can offer our mobile users. With GeckoView we have the ability to develop faster, more secure and more user-friendly browsers that deliver unprecedented performance.<\/p>\n

To speak more specifically about features, here are some new functions Firefox Preview will offer, partially enabled by GeckoView:<\/p>\n

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