FENNEC F-DROID AS A REPLACEMENT FOR AGING ICECAT 68 ESR [ANDROID]

UPDATED ON: 2023-02-20
I recommend to replace Fennec F-Droid with [Mull Browser] due to the fact that is COMPLETELY free from telemetry.
In contrast to Fennec Mull browser do not trigger any mozilla or google connections, so take a note.
And for God’s sake do not use plain Firefox, it is almost like chrome now!

As my main web surfer IceCat begin to showing it’s age and don’t have any new versions apart from “super-new” 68.4.2 ESR.
[it can be found on the web, but only @ [F-Droid Archive repository] ] So, I start to look for a viable replacement for it.

Although, I ‘m using [Privacy Browser] as a backup option it doesn’t fully match my requirements.
It’s even prone to crashing on [4Gb Ram Sony XZ1 Compact phone] , assume memory leaks are taking place.
And yeah, it is chrome-based-webview thing, so take a note before using it.

Taking into account recent Mozilla degradation changes such as:

• dropping support of mandatory FTP protocol
• starting to trace it’s users even more than ever
• absence of essential about:config option [we are talking about android version]
• copying chrome in every aspect

We can safely say that Mozilla is for sure a sinking ship.

But nevertheless these sad words some time ago I randomly stumble upon [Fennec F-Droid browser] .

The key points of Fennec F-Droid are:

• pretty modern, safe version of browser based upon Firefox 81 [so a bit of future-proof is here]
• no telemetry stuff [at least telemetry is replaced with empty stubs, see below for explanation]
• presence of about:config option for under the hood fine tunings [which we all like so much]

I’ve researched the topic and find out that [we can safely use any version which is less than 81.1.1] . Relan, F-Droid contributor [reported that tracking with Firebase, Adjust, Leanplum was introduced right in 81.1.1 version] . However, in Fennec F-Droid [data collecting endpoints were replaced by empty stubs] .

I won’t trust this so much because development of repo was recently retaken by filthy mozilla. Nevertheless the announcement of code contributor regarding empty code stubs is a ringing bell. Stubs can be easily changed with real trackers in the upcoming future. And it will. 108%. Not less than this.

In conclusion I would like to underline the fact that even in today’s situation we have multiple choices for mobile web browser.
Ain’t that pretty?
Make sure to check [this post] also.