Those who want to know more about the upgrade process are advised to check out the browser's FAQ page. It allows us to be completely free of bias when it comes to implementation of standards and features, lets us create a user interface that, combined with an overall faster browsing pace, enables unprecedented performance and also protects our users from security issues in Blink that would affect all other major mobile browsers. GeckoView is the only independent alternative to Blink, Chrome’s mobile browsing engine. That’s why we revamped the Firefox for Android to be the most private mobile Firefox so far, powered by our own mobile browsing engine GeckoView for the first time. That’s why we decided to roll the new Firefox for Android out gradually in order to provide users with a positive transition experience.Īt Firefox, it’s our goal to enable users to be in control of their online experience while enjoying all the benefits of a modern, fast and secure browsing application.

Rolling out an entirely new product to a large group of users is a complex process that can easily result in issues when executed too quickly. We started to roll out the new Firefox for Android at the end of July 2020, making it available to users in Germany, France and the UK on August 25.

'Since the update on Android yesterday, it has become unusable – it crashes every few minutes – when trying to search Google or DuckDuckGo, or (ironically) when I click the Crashes link in the help pages.'

'I have used Firefox since before it was called Firefox,' added Ace Medlock. 'My main gripe is that there is no back button (to return to your previous page) anymore.' 'This is the worst 'upgrade' I've ever experienced,' said netizen Martin Lindenmayer. This is the worst 'upgrade' I've ever experienced Meanwhile, the Google Play store page for the completely free and open-source Firefox has a rash of one-star reviews echoing similar complaints: after the upgrade, little seemed to work as expected. 'A lot got broken in the process: the user interface, tabs, navigation, add-ons.' 'To sum it up, on 20th of August, Firefox 79 was unexpectedly forced on a large batch of Firefox 68 Android users without any warning, way to opt out or roll back,' our reader reported. In fact, this was a deliberate software release.Ī Reg reader yesterday alerted us to an August 20 version bump that was causing so many problems, our tipster thought it was a beta that had gone seriously awry. An update to the Android flavor of Firefox left fuming punters thinking a bad experimental build had been pushed to their smartphones.

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