Categories: For Android

Firefox for Android Beta is Expanding Support to New Devices: Help Us Test!

The Firefox team is dedicated to bring the best of the mobile Web to everyone we can reach. It is our mission to make the Web and the world a better place. Just recently, we announced a redesigned Firefox for Android for phones and tablets to make it faster and easier to get where you want to go on the mobile Web.

And we’re not done yet. Today, we’re expanding the devices we support on Firefox for Android Beta with an experimental build to include phones running on an older processor architecture – ARMv6 – in order to make the mobile Web accessible to even more people! This includes popular phones such as the Samsung Galaxy Pro GT-B7510, HTC Status, Motorola XT531, and Motorola Fire XT.

Why do we think this is important?

To date, Firefox for Android has supported phones running Android versions 2.2 and higher, but only on phones equipped with ARMv7 processors. But now, Firefox for Android Beta includes preliminary support to run on a subset of phones using ARMv6 processors.

And now we need your help to test and provide feedback to help us make the best browser for even more phones!

Given that 55% of the 133 million Android phones out there run on the ARMv6 architecture, there are a lot of new people to whom we can introduce the open Web, but we can’t support every phone all at once.

We are planning a phased approach to expand the set of minimum system requirements needed for Firefox for Android to run. To get us started, we’re opening up the build to phones running 800 MHz with an ARMv6 processor and 512 MB of RAM.

And this is where you can really make a difference. We are inviting you to try out our experimental Firefox for Android Beta and provide us feedback, so please take part and tell us how it goes!

You can help by answering these questions:

  1. Does Firefox for Android Beta download properly to your phone and install as expected?
  2. Are you able to browse as you normally would? Do your favorite websites load correctly? Does Firefox for Android Beta unexpectedly crash?

Share your experience with us using one of the following ways (and don’t forget to tell us what phone you’re using!):

If your phone isn’t listed as being compatible with Firefox for Android Beta, but you still want to help, visit us on the Firefox Aurora site and let us know what device you’re using and if you’re able to download Firefox for Android.

So grab your phone – more than one if you’re really eager – visit the Google Play Store, and download Firefox for Android Beta!

Thanks for helping us push innovation forward on the Web. With your help, we’ll be able to expand the reach of the open Web to millions more people – one phone at a time!