I’ve always enjoyed riding the Firefox-bandwagon and that hasn’t changed, even though Google Chrome seems to be the browser of choice amongst the cool kids nowadays. And if only because I’m a faithful guy, I’ve been running Firefox Mobile ever since I bought a Samsung Galaxy SII as well. Sure it doesn’t do Flash, but I’m not that Flash-inclined anyway.
Now, I haven’t met too many people that use Firefox Mobile and indeed when reading about mobile browsers, Firefox is rarely if ever mentioned. But what if I told you that Firefox Mobile is by far the best browser on mobile when taking performance, features and security into consideration?
I won’t beat around the bush, here’s the pretty objective data.
| browser | hardware | Sunspider | v8 benchm. | html5test score |
| Firefox Mobile 9b | Samsung Galaxy SII | 1421.9ms | 832 | 314 |
| Android 2.3 browser | Samsung Galaxy SII | 3454.4ms | 369 | 177 |
| Android 4 browser | Google Galaxy Nexus | 1983ms | 1387 | 230 |
| Mobile Safari | iPhone 4s | 2260.9ms | 368 | 296 |
| Opera Mobile 11.5 | Samsung Galaxy SII | 1699.9ms | 461 | 285 |
| Dolphin HD 7.2 | Samsung Galaxy sII | 3593.4ms | 318 | 177 |
Some remarks:
- the hardware is pretty comparable; all dual-core CPU’s and plenty of RAM.
- higher is better, except for Sunspider which measures time (in microseconds).
- I’ve got no screenshot or URL of the google v8 test results on my phone, but I’ll be glad to reproduce.
- sunspider and v8 are javascript performance benchmarks.
- html5test is an indication for support of “modern” browser features (html5, css3 and much more).
- the features of the browser GUI arent’t measured byhtml5test, but I’m pretty pleased with Firefox Mobile in that respect as well; great tabbed browsing, plugins (including noscript!), sync-ing of all relevant data between desktops & mobile, …
- I added Opera Mobile and Dolphin HD to the list. Opera’s not too shabby but not a winner either?
And last but not least; as Firefox Mobile isn’t native and since it’s on the same (crazy) rapid release cycle as the desktop-version, I consider it to be a lot more secure when compared to the slow evolving, rarely updated native browsers in Android and iOS.
My advice; if you’re an Android-user and you’ve got a recent handset or tablet, you really should consider switching to Firefox Mobile. It’s the best mobile browser no-one is using! Except for you?
