Fox just got foxier! Android users can now get access to Firefox on their mobile phones. The open source browser got in to prealpha version for the Android platform. In the software world, beta builds have minimum instability, and alpha ones are ones which are kind of stable and thus, you should get some vague idea of prealpha. So, if you are the experimenter and ready to take crashes head on and positively, then the prealpha is for you!

Don’t worry; Mozilla has covered itself with tons of caveats and considerations as warnings. The Mozilla testing team has tested the android only on the Motorola Droid and Nexus one, and they are quite sure it won’t work on any android device running OS below 2.0 and also are quite sure that you need OpenGL ES 2.0.

Moreover, you need to install the Firefox on your phone memory and not the memory card you got. This one is a memory hogger and hence, the heavier pages will not be loaded properly. Most of the apps won’t open and add to it a bundle of installation problems before you can get this piece of code working to preview website.

So what is Firefox Android avatar called as- Fennec, also known as Black screen of death from all the hands on trails we put it through.

Firstly, you need to reboot your phone as soon as you install it. You will be surprised by the welcome screen you get- It looks like the finished product. The look is similar to Firefox mobile for Maemo platform which supports tabbed browsing, metaphor of swiping left and right with touch screen, bookmarks , settings, navigation menus and browser tabs are live and working! There are differences between Android and Nokia internet devices which are basically button placement and can be written of as nuances.

Fennec prealpha version already supports Mozilla Weave which is an extension that allows you to access tabs from Firefox on the desktop as well as the ones opened on your mobile browser. Moreover, it includes its standard start page and few standard plugins to get you searching through Google, Amazon, twitter and Wikipedia.

Fennec experimental version of Weave Sync does work but the installation process is quite rough and we hope it will only get smoother as the next version releases. Nonetheless, it performed its function seamlessly as it performs on a system.

Fennec does has some ad hoc development defects, such as accidental keyboard pop ups, lack of multitouch support for zoom (limited to 1 level) and does not respond to back button making it more difficult to navigate since you have to use the navigation sidebar.

Nonetheless, Fennec is now open to the real world of testers and will only get better as versions to come as it has implemented one of the core values of open source philosophy- Active feedback loop. Even tough there are plenty of loop holes, it would only benefit the app since we are getting to expose them and try and get it fixed.

So if you are real hardcore Android tester, here is a challenging app for you to test!