Aug 27, 2010 14:22 GMT  ·  By

After many months of waiting, the mobile version of Firefox is finally officially available for download for handsets running under Google's Android operating system (2.0 and above), though only in an alpha flavor for the time being.

We're referring here to the Fennec 2.0 alpha 1 flavor of the solution, which was released today for Android and Nokia N900 devices, and which is also available for download for desktop PCs running under Windows, Linux, or Mac OS.

“The Alpha release of the next major version of Fennec is now available for Android and Nokia N900 users to download and test. Fennec (codename for Firefox mobile) is he first mobile browser to offer add-ons and is built on the same technology that powers desktop Firefox,” Mozilla states.

The new flavor of Fennec is based on what previous releases of the solution included, though they were available only for Maemo until now. However, the solution sports.

“Fennec Alpha now creates one fluid Web experience between desktop and mobile devices by providing Firefox Sync built-in into the browser, which provides seamless access to Awesome Bar browsing history, bookmarks, passwords, form-fill data and open tabs,” the company announced.

The new iteration of the mobile browser was focused mainly on increasing the performance and responsiveness it offers to users, which was achieved through the implementation of two major technologies, “Electrolysis” and “Layers.”

Electrolysis is meant to enable the browser interface and the rendering Web content to run in separated process. Thus, Fennec should react faster to user input even when pages are being loaded or CPU intensive JavaScript is running.

“The upcoming beta release will start taking advantage of Layers to greatly improve performance in graphic intensive actions like scrolling, zooming, animations and video. We’re also working to optimize these actions using the hardware-accelerated graphics rendering capabilities showing up in today’s mobile devices,” the development team announced.

This is the first alpha release of the solution for Android devices, and Mozilla sees it as a great step forward towards “bringing browser choice and customization, along with a seamless Web experience across devices, to a leading open mobile platform,” as Mozilla states.

The video embedded below should offer more info on the new release.

Download Fennec 2.0 Alpha 1 for mobile devices. Download Fennec 2.0 Alpha 1 for Windows Download Fennec 2.0 Alpha 1 for Linux Download Fennec 2.0 Alpha 1 for Mac OS