Only those who remember – or are aware of the browser and related tools landscape in the first half of the 2000’s, with Microsoft’s embarrassing IE still ruling the usage statistics the way Google’s Chrome does now – can appreciate what we had when Mozilla Firefox came on the scene.

And then, the magnitude of what has been lost in the meantime.

Without going into the details of how the Mozilla Foundation badly fumbled the ball over the years, attempting to stretch itself in all manner of directions (remember, there was a phone once, not to mention wasting money and energy on politically correct “causes”) – there has been at least one “Firefox offshoot” that made sense.

It’s the Mozilla Thunderbird email clients – but, cynics will say, of course since it made sense to develop, it eventually became the proverbial red-headed stepchild of a foundation (company, really) “high” on that Google Search money, and the “woke wave.”

But after quite a few stop-and-go’s regarding the status and future of the free and open source email client (at one point it was thought that Mozilla had given up entirely and was looking for other “custodians” to take care of it – now it’s apparently a “community-driven subsidiary”) – the lucky few who still want Thunderbird on their Android phones can test a new beta.

It comes two years after the latest “signs of life” from the project – that’s when Mozilla Thunderbird “joined forces” with another Android email client, K-9.

Recently there was the announcement of a beta Thunderbird Android app, with the stable version scheduled to be rolled out during this month.

In late September, the Thunderbird blog called on faithful users to help test the final development version before the release, going from beta to RC (release candidate), and then in late October, the final version is supposed to be available for Android.

The latest versions are meanwhile available on GitHub, while the beta release is also on Google Play.