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Comment by hdhzy | Hacker News Reader

Not to mention Firefox for Android that supports extensions (uBlock etc.).

Unfortunately, for me at least, it's not a viable option. Firefox on android still feels significantly more sluggish than chrome. Plus, googles questionable business practice of embedding chrome into many apps, while making opening links very fast, adds another three clicks to someone not using chrome.

I use the Brave browser to address this. It's based on Chromium with built in features based on Privacy Badger and HTTPS everywhere. It also replaces "Chrome view" so that if you click a link from an app and it opens up with the app, you're still getting the privacy features. And since it's Chromium based I don't see the sluggishness I do in Firefox for Android.

Hmm, you're saying apps use Brave instead of Chrome? That'd be amazing. I mean, you could block ads in apps that way. How does one enable that?

> And since it's Chromium based I don't see the sluggishness I do in Firefox for Android.

The point of the article is that you'll be able to have a quick experience with Android, without using that one tracker called Google.

> Firefox on android still feels significantly more sluggish than chrome.

Note that none of the Quantum work has been turned on for mobile Firefox yet. I hear it will be coming online in nightly this cycle, targeting Firefox 58.

This is incorrect. The Quantum Flow work affects mobile Firefox.

The thing that is not on mobile Firefox is Stylo.

The Quantum project includes more than Stylo and WebRender. There are lots of small performance fixes ("Quantum Flow") in core Gecko code that should improve performance on Android. Stylo for Android is currently targeting Firefox 59. I don't know if WebRender will support Android.

Firefox for Android Beta currently has the Quantum update, and it's buttery smooth!

I got the beta two days ago and oh my God this thing is super fast. I used to dread opening web pages, now it's my favorite thing! I am extremely impressed with the work they did.

That's interesting. I find Firefox Nightly on Android to be extremely slow compared to Chrome.

What's your setup?

I don't know what changed, but at last the terrible lag when moving the cursor on text fields is gone. Loving it.

I do have to find the webextension equivalent of half my add-ons though.

Yeah, and unfortunately some of the addons aren't even available :(

From a technical position that may be true, but one cannot discount the speedup you subsequently get if you run an ad/script/tracker blocker on mobile...

I just use a VPN application that host-blocks that stuff.

Sort of off-topic, but I'm baffled by how well host-blocking works still, given the trivial nature of the blockade.

Best i can tell, Firefox is doing something on Android during first (cold?) launch that just chugs the storage. The really problem source is that all this is stored in the cache dir for the app, and that can and will be flushed at irregular intervals. This resulting in Firefox doing it over again next time it is launched.

Well, my issue was mainly with render speed. The delay between scrolling and the site actually rendering in is the issue.

Your lucky, I'm dealing with an app crash every hour or so(if I'm lucky), ui freeze, then hang for 5 seconds , then ' email us the details box', before it restarts.

Trying the beta now though, fingers crossed!

Try Firefox Focus.

The chrome embedding is in theory cross browser compatible. Firefox nightly supports the API. It's still possible for the embedding app to hardcode to chrome (which the Google app seems to do) but the Android developer page recommends the cross browser approach

You can set Firefox as the default browser ("always use this app", not "once"), and the number of clicks becomes the same.

For instance, it takes me exactly one click to open a link from the HN app I'm using in Firefox.

> Firefox on android still feels significantly more sluggish than chrome.

Interesting because for me it's the exact opposite: Firefox is fast but when I need to open Chrome (webview or full) it's a slow and painful process (tested on two phones, one 3 year old). Maybe it's because Firefox has everything cached and Chrome needs to load from network... Not to mention full screen, aggressive ads :)

Set it as the default browser; it will work normally.

Firefox also supports https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/android/customtabs .

It also has a very nifty feature (IIRC off by default) where if you click on a link instead of switching to Firefox it shows a "Tab opened in Firefox" toast which you can tap on to switch to. This means I can for example click on the links in an email whilst still reading it, and then switch to the browser later to read them all. This does make opening links two taps by default (tap on the link, and then tap on the toast), but there's no tap-hold so it's fast and nice. Plus my workflow prefers opening tabs that i look at later, not immediately.

Disagreed. I might have 3GB of RAM on this phone, but the browser(s) often get moved out of RAM. It's slower to start than Chrome/Brave. Cold-boot performance matters. I keep Firefox Beta around, and just checked, it's still almost twice as slow as Brave in a adhoc cold start test.

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with, I was specifically responding to the "adds another three clicks" thing

I see. I thought you meant that as a default browser, there would be less chance for it to be swapped out, and therefore it would be sluggish.

I really can't stand browsing without an ad blocker nowadays. This is the reason I do it at all on the mobile.

Yep, been using FF on Android for three years now. Its the best mobile browser around.

And ublock origin must have saved me hundreds of euros and days of time already. (God the internet with ads and trackers is terrible. Gizmodo has a dozen trackers, one of them is called summerhamster. True story).

I now use Firefox Focus as default html viewer for links. Very good.

Firefox focus is my mobile browser of choice to just look up a fact. No ads, cookies or trackers and bins your history on closing.

That's basically a wrapper around Webview, that in turn is chrome based...

true I forgot that (although it seems they forked brave but that's still webview)

That's true on IOS but on Android is the real thing

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-android/wiki/Archite...

Notice that they could not support Android 4.4 because they would require using geckoview.

Also, there is no way a browser of only 4MB can contain a whole web engine. The only Android browsers that get so small depend on webview.

Consider this, even the old Presto based Opera Mobile clocked in at 15MB on Android.

I think https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-android/issues/13 is the relevant tracking issue.

I just have JavaScript off on my phone

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