Android Portal

Mozilla has recently released an alpha version of Firefox Mobile (dubbed Fennec). The features definitely sound intriguing: The browser can hide the user interface completely to free up space on the screen, it will support Weave, allowing users to access the bookmarks and browsing history on their desktop computer, it features a smart address bar that can guess what you’re trying to type (important when using a tiny keypad) and future version may even provide tactile feedback using the vibration motors.

There’s a catch, though. In an interview with ABC, Jay Sullivan, Mozilla’s vice president of mobile, revealed that we may not see an Android version of Fennec if applications cannot run natively on Android phones. At present all apps in the Marketplace are written in Java and are interpreted by the Dalvik Virtual Machine. This means they can run on all kinds of different Android phones, and since access to the underlying operating system is restricted, it’s also rather secure.

Running applications natively would take away this layer of security, and it may also make it harder to produce software that works on a wide range of phones. On the plus side the performance would probably be a bit better, and it would be easier to port software to Android without having to rewrite it in Java.

Personally, I don’t think we will see official support for native Linux apps in Android anytime soon because the security implications are considerable and because this would eliminate some of the core features of the OS (ability to interact with other apps, managed resources). There will definitely be user efforts to install native apps and it won’t take long until someone finds a new way to gain root access to the OS now that the pre-RC30 root shell bug is patched, but whether Mozilla will make a Fennec version just for the Android “tinkerers” remains to be seen.