Not sure if you should buy that Android app? Amazon announced this week that it is extending its "Test Drive" service to Android phones, which will allow Amazon Appstore users to try out apps before buying or downloading.
Amazon has offered Test Drive for Web apps for more than a year. But given that most apps are consumed via mobile devices, having the ability to try before you buy on phones is more significant.
"The more we remove friction for customers who want to try apps, the more apps they will try. Those customers are more likely to find apps they are excited to download," Amazon said in a post on its Appstore developers blog. "In this way, Test Drive helps customers understand the value of premium apps and helps drive downloads of freemium apps."
Test Drive has already been enabled for more than 16,000 Web apps, and is currently available on more than 5,000 apps for Android phones. Apps with Test Drive activated will include a "Test Drive beta" tag below the app description. Tap that and experience the app without downloading or installing anything on your phone, Amazon said.
"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," Amazon said. "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 Wi-Fi 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."
Test Drive is available for free for those who update to the latest version of Amazon Appstore for Android. Amazon said the feature will be activated on "select phone models," but did not specify which ones.
"When new phone models are supported, the Test Drive button will automatically appear on apps that are enabled for Test Drive," according to Amazon.
A March study from Flurry found that for every dollar spent on the iOS version of an app, 89 cents was spent on the app within the Amazon Appstore, but just 23 cents was spent on the Google Play version of the app.
On Google Play, formerly known as the Android Market, users are provided with a 15-minute return window and can only return a particular app once. In December 2010, Google dropped the return window from 24 hours to 15 minutes "since most users who request a refund do so within minutes of purchase," Google said at the time.
That, however, prompted a March lawsuit that accused the search giant of profiting off bogus apps and providing an insufficient window of time in which they can return underperforming apps.
For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius.
