Firefox Mobile Fennec Alpha Hits Android And N900 [Video]

Firefox Mobile for Android and the Nokia N900 has been pushed out, or at least Mozilla's Alpha release of the smartphone browser.  Natively supporting Firefox Sync – bringing desktop browsing history, bookmarks, passwords, form-fill data and open tabs to the mobile app – the new browser apparently concentrates on increasing speed and responsiveness, with Mozilla debuting their new "Electrolysis" and "Layers" technology.

Video demo after the cut

Electrolysis splits the browser UI process from the web rendering engine process, which apparently keeps app responsiveness high even when there's plenty of page loading or JavaScript crunching going on in the background.  Meanwhile Layers – which will arrive in the Beta version of Firefox Mobile – will improve zoom, animation, video and scroll performance, including taking advantage of whatever hardware GPU acceleration might be present.

No word on when that Beta might be released, however, so for now it's the Alpha – as with any such software, it might not be the most stable thing you could install on your smartphone.  You can download the new version of Firefox Mobile here, while the release notes are here.