[Yetanfou]

Is your device rooted? If so, install AdAway (from the fdroid repo) or a similar host-based blocker. This takes care of a large part of the ad-related misery. I do run Firefox (well, Fennec, really, minus the obnoxious bits which Mozilla has been slipping in recently) on a 4 year old Motorola Defy. The battery lasts for about 5 days so I don't think that bit about FF 'drink[ing] battery' is correct, at least not in my case. I do not have uBlock (or any other blocker) installed as the hosts-based solution is sufficient for now.

[buffoon]

No it's not rooted and I can't deploy our device policy on rooted devices (this is a company phone; a moto g 3rd gen).

I had terrible battery problems on a moto g2 about a year ago which is what I'm basing my opinion on so that may be invalid now.

[Nexxxeh]

Oh man, what a difference a year makes. I gave up on FF when it was a freshly laid turd. I tried it again a few months back on a recommendation from HN. Whoa. They've managed to polish it into a diamond.

You'd have to prize Firefox and uBlock (on my first gen Moto G) out of my cold dead hands.

[buffoon]

Downloading now. You have at least persuaded me to have another go at it :)

[Nexxxeh]

Load in uBlock, and if you use it, Lastpass.

I browsed The Verge site just fine. (The images took a little longer to load than I expected, but I checked and same happens on the desktop. So it's a shitty ISP/CDN/Optimization problem rather than a browser one.)