Amazon App Store Brings “Test Drive” Feature To Mobile Devices With Latest Update

If you use the Amazon App Store, you’ll be happy to know the “Test Drive” feature is now available via the mobile app thanks to a recent update. Version 2.6.53. of the Amazon App Store brings bug fixes, performance enhancements, and the ability for users to test out certain apps before purchasing. The mobile “Test Drive” feature is currently in “beta” form and only seems to be active on certain devices but you can expect it to gradually make its way to more devices in the future.

Amazon has kicked off this beta by enabling over 5,000 apps for Test Drive and highlights how customers can take advantage of the new feature:

How do customers Test Drive your app?

Customers click the “Test Drive” button on an app product page and in seconds, they can use their phone’s touch screen and accelerometer to control the app, simulating the experience of the app running on their phone. Test Drive provides customers with the experience of running an app for the first time, as if it were freshly installed. Customers can purchase or download the app at any point during the Test Drive experience.

The Test Drive beta is available for free to customers who update to the latest release of Amazon Appstore for Android on their phone (version 2.6.53 or higher). Initially, Test Drive will be available on select phone models but over the coming months, we will roll it out to many more. When new phone models are supported, the Test Drive button will automatically appear on apps that are enabled for Test Drive.

How does Test Drive work?

Amazon brings the Test Drive experience to Amazon.com and Android phones using the massive server fleet that comprises the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), a web service that provides on-demand compute capacity in the cloud for developers. When customers click the Test Drive button, we launch a copy of the app on EC2. As customers interact with the app, we send those inputs over the phone’s WiFi Internet connection to the app running on Amazon EC2. Our servers then send the video and audio output from the app back to the customer’s computer or phone. All this happens in real time, allowing customers to explore the features of the app as if it were running locally on their mobile device.

Just another way Amazon is trying to reinvent the wheel and give users a reason to purchase from their app store versus any other.