The Firefox team has been hard at work trying to improve upon their mobile browser and release a version with an optimized tablet experience. They teased us back in August — showing off some Firefox magic on a Honeycomb tablet — and now, thanks to this latest update, they’ve given us the chance to experience it for ourselves.

Firefox 9 for Android primarily boasts about its new tablet UI features, but for those of you using it on your phone, there’s also significant improvements such as:

• – Faster start-up time
• – Camera input support: developers can integrate camera functionality directly in Web sites
• – HTML5 form validation
• – New Action Bar Menu
• – One-touch bookmarks
• – And more

The biggest news is of course the completely redesigned tablet experience. Users will benefit from the new full screen portrait mode with tabs conveniently located in the top left menu. While the tablet optimization is a nice addition, I’ve been told that users are still forced to view sites in “mobile” view which is a huge disappointment. Not many people prefer a mobile viewing experience, especially when using a large screen, so it’s odd they are forcing tablet users to view in this format. Perhaps they are worried about load times and want to keep the image of fast and smooth.

Either way, Firefox 9 for Android is another option available to users and completes the circle for those who continue to use it as their desktop default. I can see wanting to keep everything familiar and synced and thus realize its appeal. If you’d like to learn more about the new Firefox for Android, check out the short video Firefox has prepared, and then follow the source links below.

Android Market Link | Firefox for Android

• SourceMozilla Blog