While we’ve reported Mozilla’s Fennec browser being leaked and compiled in the past, the company has just released a “pre-alpha” version of the browser to the public. Those who wish to grab the .apk and start browsing can do so by visiting this text link from your phone. The release comes via the blog of Vladimir Vukicevic, an “Infrastructuralist” at Mozilla whose blog has a fair amount of posts about Firefox’ little cousin.

Support includes installing extensions, which I find very cool. Warnings abound: it’s extremely buggy at the moment, but right now I’d take something from the developer over some fan-compiled projects.

This build should be considered “pre-alpha”, so there are some warnings and caveats:

• We’ve only really tested this on the Motorola Droid and the Nexus One.
• It will likely not eat your phone, but bugs might cause your phone to stop responding, requiring a reboot.
• Memory usage of this build isn’t great — in many ways it’s a debug build, and we haven’t really done a lot of optimization yet.  This could cause some problems with large pages, especially on low memory devices like the Droid.
• You’ll see the app exit and relaunch on first start, as well as on add-on installs; this is a quirk of our install process, and we’re working to get rid of it.
• You can’t open links from other apps using Fennec; we should have this for the next build.
• This build requires Android 2.0 or above, and likely an OpenGL ES 2.0 capable device

Vladimir Vukićević

Jay Sullivan, Mozilla’s vice president of mobile, has stressed that his goal for 2010 is to ship at least a beta version of Firefox for Android. It looks like he will get his wish after a lengthy progress report tells us they have beefed up their resources.

Wow, it’s great to see how excited people are about getting Firefox running on their Android phones! We’ve made a bunch of progress in the past few weeks, and we’ve really ramped up development in the past few days, including bringing new folks onto the project.Vladimir VukićevićMozilla

Only three months ago the team had nothing working or building for Android and now they are close to moving all their patches and changes to the main Mozilla trunk (base of the project on which development progresses).

A few bugs need to be squashed and then nightly builds should start flowing. This is an important milestone because it will allow more testers to join the project and provide their feedback. After the nightly builds start coming, a public alpha should follow.

The last time we saw Fennec running on the Droid it was a little clunky. Vladimir uploaded a new video to demonstrate the progress they have made and it appears to be running much smoother. He goes on to say we can expect future performance enhancements when they get their hardware accelerated rendering system going on Android.

Another one of the teams goals before the nightly builds is to get Weave working. This feature allows the mobile browser to sync bookmarks and history with the full Firefox.

Recent additions to the latest Android build include:

• Soft keyboard issues resolved
• Rotation behavior perfected
• Accelerometer support
• Experimenting with different rendering approaches like using OpenGL

Mozilla recently dropped Windows phone support for Firefox mobile and hopes to have at least a public beta by late 2010.

They had been working on an alpha version for Windows Mobile, but decided to stop development after Microsoft took a new direction with Windows Phone 7 (no NDK support). A quick look at Mozilla’s mobile platforms page reveals there are no plans for BlackBerry, iPhone, or Symbian. Since Maemo has failed to catch on, that leaves Android as the premier platform for Firefox Mobile.

The last time we saw Firefox for Android, developers had already ported the mobile UI (Fennec) and had it running on a Droid and Nexus One. Mozilla has demonstrated rapid progress in developing their browser for Android and plans to have a public release this year. Jay Sullivan, Mozilla’s vice president of mobile, has stressed that his goal for 2010 is to ship at least a beta version of Firefox for Android.

Now that a Windows Phone version is no longer on the table, we expect Mozilla will reach their goal of an Android release by late 2010. Based on our analytics reports, Firefox is the most popular browser of visitors to this site (27%) so we will definitely keep an eye on them.

For the latest news on Firefox for mobile, follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

Developers chose to focus on the desktop UI first because it was “significantly more complex than the mobile UI and stresses Gecko much more”. After the desktop version was working, devs moved on to the mobile UI (Fennec) and already have it implemented.

Two screenshots were posted on the Firefox for Mobile Facebook page that demonstrate Fennec on a Motorola Droid and Nexus One.

A final release is not expected till late this year, but at the rate things appear to be moving maybe we will see a public beta by summer.

Fennec running on the Nexus One.

As you can see from the screen below, this is the desktop Firefox browser running in Android. Mozilla engineer Vladimir Vukićević says, “We’re testing with the full interface because it’s significantly more complex than the mobile UI and stresses Gecko much more.  So, if the full UI works, then Fennec should work fine as well.”

There is still no word when the mobile UI will get implemented or a possible beta release, but at least we can see some progress. The feature that excites me the most about Firefox Mobile for Android is the growing library of add-ons.

Mobile UI still to come.

We have known that Mobile Firefox was coming to Android since October, however, even as it launched on the N900 in December we were not offered any new information on when our little green friend would get his turn. We saw the browser taking its fledgling steps on Android a couple weeks ago (while thumbing its nose at the iPhone), but still couldn’t put pen to paper on a date.

The waiting (well, the waiting for a date to wait for) is finally over. In an interview with TechRadar earlier today, Mozilla’s VP of Mobiles confirmed that we can expect Fennec to arrive on Android later this year. Obviously this leaves them quite a bit of wiggle room on the exact timing and as they indicated just a couple weeks ago that they were a ways from a usable alpha release, we can reasonably assume that a Q4 2010 release of the final product is the most likely.

“It’s a modern OS, and it’s a great fit with us. It’s the type of platform that has a high affinity with the early adopter, and it’s seen a lot of uptake.”Jay Sullivan VP of Mobiles for Mozilla

So between Skyfire, Opera Mobile 10, and now Fennec all coming to Android this year; which browser are you the most excited to get your hands on?

Note that the screen shows the full Firefox browser and not the mobile UI. Vladimir explains the situation on his blog:

You’ll note that this is the full Firefox interface, and not the Fennec/Firefox Mobile UI; we’re testing with the full interface because it’s significantly more complex than the mobile UI and stresses Gecko much more.  So, if the full UI works, then Fennec should work fine as well.  Given the interest in Android on netbook and tablet devices, an updated version of the full Firefox UI might find a home on some of these.  Android has been pretty great to work with so far; it’s a bit unusual platform for us due to its Java core, but with the NDK we’re able to bridge things together without many problems.Vladimir VukićevićMozilla

In a related note, Mozilla has updated their mobile platforms page with their plans for other operating systems. They chose Maemo as their first mobile platform then started on Windows Mobile. Android is Mozilla’s next biggest challenge and they have no plans to support other platforms at this time.

Mozilla does not have plans to build an iPhone browser due to constraints with the OS environment and distribution.

Bonus: Check out the more than 40 add-ons that are currently available for Firefox Mobile