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Comment by Zak | Hacker News Reader

Android is barely mentioned in the article, but Firefox for Android offers significantly more compelling advantages over Chrome on Android than desktop. For some users, the ability to run extensions is a big win.

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My problem with Firefox on Android is extreme latency on initial page load.

I select a URL, and literally sit there for 5 to 10 full seconds before the page even starts to load (it does render quickly once it starts).

I load the same page on the same device with Brave, or Chrome, and there's near-zero latency. It just starts loading right away.

I'd love to switch over, as Firefox is my daily driver on the desktop and it's where all of my passwords are synced. But on Android it just hasn't been usable for me yet.

That has not been my experience, or I would probably not be satisfied with Firefox on Android. I just checked and saw no difference between Firefox and Chrome starting to load a page.

I have the same problem as OP, which makes me think that this is not common, and yet it affects some people. If it were common, the app wouldn't exist because it is just entirely unusable.

I have the same problem with Firefox on Ubuntu.

First page load takes 10-30 seconds, and after that Firefox is fast and snappy.

However, my computer at work doesn't have this problem (and runs the same version of Ubuntu, i.e. 18.04.1)

Perhaps I should investigate this better, for instance by looking at system load, memory, and perhaps by monitoring system calls using strace.

I used to have this problem and I remember it being DNS related. It was a while ago and I don't quite remember what I did to resolve it, but it had something to do with disabling IPv6 dns resolution while not using IPv6 in about:config and possibly something else as well.

Yes I think you're on the right track. It must be some lurking network misconfiguration. Firefox itself is not broken in this way in my experience (which is not short).

Also not my experience. In fact I moved from Chrome to Firefox because I preferred the Firefox UI.

I was almost pulled back by Chrome's "translate page" option. It's near indispensable when holidaying overseas. But then I discovered I could install ublock origin on Android Firefox. The difference is literally spectacular. You use less data - but data caps are so big now that doesn't matter so much. It's not just the fast page load, although that is nice. It's the fact that screen real estate is precious on mobile. It's the different between regularly having to scroll to see the page you clicked on, and not.

A new generation of Firefox for Android is coming next week. It's called Firefox Preview – it doesn't have all the features, but it should be much faster, if you want to give it a try.

Try Firefox Beta. Works like a charm for me with 100+ tabs always open (including 10+ HN articles to read later) on ATT Samsung Galaxy 8.

Firefox for android is the only way I can block reddit and twitter as a means to improve my focus. I can't access my hosts file because to do so would require root, which apparently would break Android / Google / Samsung Pay (I'm not sure the difference between them, but apparently rooting breaks them, and I use.. er.. one of them, I dunno which one).

> I can't access my hosts file

These days you don't need to. Blokada (https://blokada.org/index.html) takes over your DNS and gives a bad response when a domain on your blocklist is requested.

Other options are to set your phone's DNS server to a pi-hole or to use a VPN to a network that has a pi-hole.

> which apparently would break Android / Google / Samsung Pay

Not the case anymore. Magisk (https://forum.xda-developers.com/apps/magisk/official-magisk...) is able to pass the Safetynet checks that most of these apps rely on. You may need to use the "Magisk Hide" and "Hide Magisk Manager" features though.

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