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Comments on Why is Firefox performing so poorly on my Android?

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Why is Firefox performing so poorly on my Android?

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Firefox is my preferred browser when using a PC. I've also always found it to be one of the faster no matter computer.

However, whenever I try to use Firefox on my Android phone (Samsung S8), it gets ridiculously slow, to the point where it is literally useless. Just now I tried to give it a honest chance once again, by doing the following:

  • Making sure it's the latest version.
  • Stop all apps running including browsers.
  • Clear the web browser cache.
  • Hard reboot the phone just in case.
  • Set home page to a newspaper site, same one as I got in Chrome.

Upon starting Firefox, it takes some >10 seconds for it to load the top of the page I just picked. And then I'm connected to wi-fi, so it is certainly not a bandwidth issue. Letting Chrome do the very same job, it loads the page within 1 second, pretty much instantly.

It doesn't seem to matter what page I pick, the browser remains extremely slow. I feel like I'm missing something obvious here. What could be causing this page loading lag?

EDIT with more details:

Memory before launching Firefox: 1.8GB free out of 4 GB available. Firefox takes approximately 400MB idle. When opening mentioned news web site it goes up to 500MB temporarily, then down to 400MB again. To be compared with Chrome using 160MB when displaying the same site.

I notice that Firefox when idle in the background occasionally grabs up to 750MB for no apparent reason. Chrome stays steady at 160MB.

Android version: 9

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3 comment threads

How much does each part of the website need to load (1 comment)
Firefox reviews (4 comments)
Android Version? (3 comments)
Firefox reviews
Anonymous‭ wrote over 2 years ago

I've been using Firefox for years. It was the best browser in my opinion. Recently there have been slow buffering problems. Web pages disappear, if you trying to research anything using cut/copy & paste the web page buffers, reloads with everything disappearing. It's crashing, just vanishes with no trace. Very disappointed that these bugs exist. Until it runs like the Firefox I knew for years...I'm moving to Opera.

This is technically a web brouser, but its got a lot of problems on mobile. It hides a lot of options in sub menus such as the Forward, Back, and Bookmarks buttons. You cannot set your Home page, resize the interface for ease of access, or move things around to suit your needs. It skips around when editing a search, won't alow me to reorder my tabs, and is generally difficult to work with. But it does brouse the internet, so it is technically a web browser. Use it if you have it on pc only.

Actually, firefox current version is worst. They are working on it.

Anonymous‭ wrote over 2 years ago · edited over 2 years ago

blockquote message is taken from Google Play's Firefox review. Some articles also say that Firefox isn't working well in current version..

Your ram is still missing in question but since your API level is 29 so your Ram will be atleast 3 or more than 3 GB. That's why I am not going to show excuse about RAM.

Lundin‭ wrote over 2 years ago

So basically it can't be used. Well, yikes. I'm hesitant to use products by Google for anything sensitive like bank access. I did use Opera on PC back in the days, it was super fast and super buggy. Stopped using it because I could't trust it not to explode during money transactions etc. Admittedly this was 15 years back or so, maybe they've sorted things out.

Anonymous‭ wrote over 2 years ago · edited over 2 years ago

I suggest to use DuckDuckGo browser in Android. That's best for safety. I personally like that. If you to be safe very strictly than you can use Brave browser or Tor browser. I was using Tor for few moments as a Hacker (When I was doing ethical hacking (not professional)). I am currently using Google Chrome cause other doesn't fit well in my system. But I am going to try Midori now.