I was on the verge of abandoning FF on Android until the new upgrade fixed the problems I had with it. So that was a big thumbs-up.
It also came with enough significant UI changes that even as a programmer who's used FF dails since pre-1.0 days, I actually had to stop and RTFM to work out how to use it. That was a catastrophic thumbs-down. Most users wouldn't stand for that level of disruption to their software.
Mozilla has done an amazing job of "one step forwards, two steps back" over the years. Firefox has gone from being the amazing browser I recommended to everyone to try to a browser I'm almost embarassed to admit I use.
I really hope the fixes they say they have in the pipeline live up to their promises and fix the issues they still have. But even if they do, if Mozilla don't stop their trend of fixing bugs but breaking the UI, it just won't matter in the end.
BTW, you're being downvoted (not by me, though it's tempting) because at least a few of those are untrue.
edit: Chrome is still faster on Android for me, addons and extensions break all the time for me in Firefox, and I don't find the memory management to be any better. It's still horrendously slow in Linux and on my work machine with 12GB of ram it just freezes no matter what.
addons and extensions break all the time for me in Firefox
Which ones? I haven't had a broken extension in months (since Firefox 10), and I use quite a few.
on my work machine with 12GB of ram it just freezes no matter what
Are you implying Firefox is using 12G on your machine?
To be honest, I think what's happening is that one of those "extensions that keeps breaking" is crap and what is using all that memory. Real Firefox has none of the problems you describe (very vaguely and without specifics), so it's hard to take you seriously - let alone see how it could be fixed.
Except it has better memory management than any other browser now.
Except its the fastest browser on Android now.
Except the upgrading no longer break addons as they're compat by default now
Except upgrading is now silent (no dialog box, no UAC prompt, no "welcome to the new firefox tab" - yes; on windows)
Except if you need a Firefox that doesn't change version at all, you can use Firefox ESR.
Cause it's not having things fixed now that matters. Nope. Never!