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I used Firefox for a long time as I wanted to use the same browser across all my devices [for synching reasons]. The Android version of Firefox is definitely th

I used Firefox for a long time as I wanted to use the same browser across all my devices [for synching reasons]. The Android version of Firefox is definitely the least 'crippled' browser I've used on mobile, with full support for plugins [not that I'm one of those who load up their browser with dozens of plugins, but I like to add a few things like uBlock, NoScript, etc]. Unfortunately [and call it subjective, if you like] Firefox on Android is slow and gets noticeably slower as you use it. It needs regular 'fettling' by manually wiping its caches –more so than any other Android browser, in my experience. After getting fed up with Firefox, I gave Opera a try and, for a while, that was my default browser across all devices. It has a brilliant text reflow on Android, which is a real 'killer feature' and, of course, the desktop version supports those 3 or 4 'must-have' plugins. Unfortunately, Opera seem to be on a kamikaze mission to drive away their few remaining users –and contrive to make each release worse than the one before. The last straw for me was when they started pushing those trashy clickbait type junk articles on the homepage as a "News Feed" and adding spamvertising bookmarks to your 'speed dial' page. Opera on mobile also seemed to suffer the FF style slow-downs, after prolonged use. So, after a brief trek through a couple more browsers [Vivaldi on desktop, Ghostery on Android], I arrived back [reluctantly, I thought at the time] at Chrome [or Chromium for the desktop version]. And you know what?... it runs great on Android. It doesn't slow down after a couple of weeks of use and have to be given a 'cache enema'. It's the only browser I've used on Android that can be relied on to communicate semi-reliably with LastPass's atrocious mobile version... [OK. I'll admit. That's LastPass's fault for making their Android app so bad that it only [just about] works with Chrome] ...and, since I've got my Android devices rooted and have AdAway patching my hosts file, I actually find out that, in daily use, the lack of plugins for Chrome on Android isn't such a big deal after all. I'd like to use Firefox for all the reasons you mentioned but, I've evaluated them all and switched between them all quite recently and have come to the conclusion that, while all browsers are flawed and all have their particular strengths and weaknesses across platforms and in terms of 'philosophy', Chrome/Chromium is currently the best of a bad bunch, for my use case. I'll be happy to take Firefox for a spin again, if they make any measurable improvements to the browser [I've read that they're working on re-writing it in Rust, which may make it a leaner machine] but frankly, the whole 'Firefox experience' recently has been a complete turn off. Are they still carrying on that lunacy of what seems like a new release every couple of days which appears to do nothing other than annoy me with yet another hefty download?

pdimitar 10y ago
Not disagreeing with anything you said, I want to make that clear first. Disclaimer: what follows only applies to Samsung Androids from 6.0 (Marshmallow) and above. I use Chrome on my Win10 main machine. What works best for me on Android is Samsung's Internet browser. It supports content blocking (definitely saves my sanity when I browse on my S7 Edge) -- and the lack of bookmarks synced to Google wasn't something that proved to be a problem. In the very rare cases I miss it, I just open my Android Chrome, copy the URL from the bookmarks UI and open it in Samsung's Internet browser. Plus it's very fast and has a pretty decent Reading Mode support (which also has a switch between a day and night mode and a config for font size; it works really well and helps a lot when I want to read the web while on the bed). I was never a brand loyalist and I realize the problem with the standards and I dislike every dev team that doesn't take it seriously, please note that. But I still love Samsung and Apple for being one of the few that keep Google's browser monopoly at bay. Microsoft too, although their Edge browser is yet to get more audience.

pdimitar 10y ago

Not disagreeing with anything you said, I want to make that clear first. Disclaimer: what follows only applies to Samsung Androids from 6.0 (Marshmallow) and above. I use Chrome on my Win10 main machine. What works best for me on Android is Samsung's Internet browser. It supports content blocking (definitely saves my sanity when I browse on my S7 Edge) -- and the lack of bookmarks synced to Google wasn't something that proved to be a problem. In the very rare cases I miss it, I just open my Android Chrome, copy the URL from the bookmarks UI and open it in Samsung's Internet browser. Plus it's very fast and has a pretty decent Reading Mode support (which also has a switch between a day and night mode and a config for font size; it works really well and helps a lot when I want to read the web while on the bed). I was never a brand loyalist and I realize the problem with the standards and I dislike every dev team that doesn't take it seriously, please note that. But I still love Samsung and Apple for being one of the few that keep Google's browser monopoly at bay. Microsoft too, although their Edge browser is yet to get more audience.