Firefox for Android version 26 brings a new home screen and optimizations for Intel chips

BY Stefan Constantinescu

Published 11 Dec 2013

Not everyone likes Google Chrome. I get that. Luckily, you can install as many browsers as you want on an Android device and even set one of them as your default. Some like Opera, some like Dolphin, and then there’s Firefox. Once upon a time, Mozilla was a household name. They stood for innovation and high performance web browsing. Today, that’s no longer the case, but there’s still a significant number of internet users who refuse to use anything else. And today, Mozilla has announced a new version of Firefox for Android.

Simply dubbed “Firefox 26”, this latest update comes with two important features. The first is a user facing one, a brand new home screen. Similar to how Chrome and Safari and Opera and just about every browser under the sun has had a home screen with little thumbnails of sites you might want to visit, Firefox for Android now has that as well.

The second feature is an under the hood optimization for Intel chips. Now I know there aren’t a lot of Intel powered smartphones and tablets out there today, but that will eventually change as Intel gets more and more aggressive. Just yesterday I published a piece saying Intel will be coming out with chips that will enable device makers to create $99 Android tablets. Whether or not those tablets will be worth buying is another question altogether, but at least Firefox will fly on them.