With the number of mobile applications available on the Android platform sometimes you may purchase one only to be left disappointed by it, but now you can try Android apps before you buy via mobile devices.
It has been announced that you no longer need a PC browser to taste apps via Amazon’s Appstore for Android, and according to PCWorld the new beta feature is again being called Test Drive for Android. To make use of the feature you will need a compatible device and the Amazon Appstore fro Android app version 2.6.52 that can be found here.
The online retailer said that to begin with only select Android hardware will be able to use the new feature to, but unfortunately didn’t reveal which phones were compatible. If your handset is compatible a green Test Drive button will appear on the applications product page above the save for later and share buttons, and the company said that more devices will be compatible in the coming months.
There are over 5,000 Android applications that are ready to use the Test Drive feature, and the entire catalogue will eventually be made available and to start with only applications that use basic touchscreen features and device accelerometers will have Test Drive enabled. Apps on Google Play have a fifteen minute refund policy and require you to purchase the app first to try it out, but Amazon’s beta version of Test Drive doesn’t require any up front purchase.
The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud servers are put to work and as you test out an app all of your taps and inputs are sent to these servers, and all audio outputs are sent back to the device. Users will be able to purchase the application at any time during the test drive. If you already have the Amazon Appstore for Android app, open its settings and see what version you have via the “Version and Release Notes”.
Test Drive was originally launched as a PC only feature last year alongside the launch of the Appstore for Android, and the company revealed it has enabled over 16,000 apps for this version so far.