The new version of Firefox for Android is dramatically faster than previous versions, and, according to a blog post from Mozilla, is "significantly faster than the stock browser that ships on Android phones". This video compares the start-up times of the previous version of Firefox, the current version and a stock Android browser.
The extra speed does come at a cost, as this article over on Web Monkey explains. The previous versions were built using Firefox's XUL interface, but this was slowing things down and has been scrapped in favour of Android's native UI controls. The consequences of this are that the new version looks less like the Firefox we're used to, and add-ons that rely on XUL won't work.
The latest version also supports Flash, and there's a new Awesome screen that uses Firefox Sync to bring in bookmarks and history from your desktop browser.
You can download the new version here, and you can see the detailed release notes here.
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