Firefox 4.0beta1 is here
Yesterday I wrote about the Firefox 4.0 beta 2 preview being released. Today Mozilla released Firefox 4.0 beta 1, which is not marked as preview any more. I expect it to be more polished and I hope to see that adding the add-ons works in this version. I use quite a lot of add-ons and if they don’t work the browser functionality is limited for me. I will try the version in any case and will report how it feels using it in regards to Firefox 4.0 beta2pre.
Is it time yet to upgrade?
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Firefox 4.0beta2pre is finally here
I have played a little with Firefox 3.7a6pre and the speed test results were great compared to Firefox 3.6. On the Mozilla project page I have been following the roadmap where it said that Firefox 4 beta will be released on June 24th. It wasn’t, but the delay was only a few days. Of course, I have downloaded the install as soon as it was available and played a little with it. First thing, I’m glad that they called the version beta instead of alpha – it makes me feel safer when trying it out. Second, the first impression was good. I have run it on my testing profile which has no add-ons and it works perfectly. The tabs look a little different and unlike in Firefox 3.6 they are positioned above the address bar. Not that I would notice, really. I have noticed, however, that the menu doesn’t hide by default and that I don’t see a bookmarks toolbar. Again, it’s there but it’s hidden by default.
I have repeated the speed test I took on 3.7a6pre and the results were slightly better on Firefox 4.0beta2pre. Compared to Firefox 3.6.6, the improvement in speed was 1.3 times. Note that 3.6.6 is faster than 3.6.3 was.
One thing I’ve noticed and have first thought negative of it was automatic updating. I love it now, because it brings me a new (nightly) version every day, but at the start I thought why I need to update a nightly beta version with another nightly beta? Now I update regularly and when my favorite add-ons will be available I’ll switch to FF4 for sure.
So this is the main downside for now: the add-ons. If I open the main menu, then Tools, the Add-ons, I get a nice looking page that should make managing add-ons even easier. However, when I click on the Get Add-ons pane and Browse all add-ons link I only get the Forbidden page…
My current Firefox4beta is “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:2.0b2pre) Gecko/20100706 Minefield/4.0b2pre ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729)” and I have just updated it when writing this post. I have run the Sunspider test again and this version seems to be even faster – 1.45 times than 3.6.6.
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My 6 months new Samsung Galaxy i7500 is already old
I have purchased my first Android powered phone in December 2009. It was good looking Samsung Galaxy i7500 that ran Android OS version 1.5.
My first impressions were OK if I exclude the camera picture quality, the battery problem and the fact that even after solving it my new phone lasted shorter time then my previous phone (which I replaced because of low battery life, ouch…). Overall, the phone was great since I got an internet enabled device with a full browser and a GPS device in it. Soon I discovered other features that were missing or weren’t complete, for example Bluetooth for file exchange was missing, I couldn’t connect to WEP networks protected with a certificate, the picture browser was very basic, NPS for phone synchronization didn’t support synchronization and similar. I was really satisfied with the number of (more or less useful) applications in the Market. I was disappointed with the GPS because it didn’t have navigation.
After some time of using the phone I have noted that the phone has become slow and inresposive. This might be because of a big number of applications that have installed, but this should not happen if I’m not running them.
I have also discovered several bugs on my i7500 that are still not solved.
But the real frustration began when Google started to release newer Android OS versions. I have discovered that Samsung doesn’t offer proper support for this phone. There were no bug fixes and absolutely no OS upgrades for this phone. I have read and wrote about the firmware with Android OS version 1.6 released, but I still didn’t receive it over the NPS updates.
Now the Android 2.2 is out and I’m still running my phone with Android 1.5. Samsung missed versions 1.6, 2.0, 2.1 and is now missing 2.2 so I’m five version behind the world. All this might not be important if my phone wasn’t only 6 months old. I’m not able to accept the fact that I bought a top-end phone and after half a year I am looking forward to replace it because newer and better phones are available.
Recently, I got an answer from the officials at Samsung Slovenia saying that my Samsung Galaxy i7500 will never get the update to 1.6 or higher.
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