Amazon Appstore, the new Android store that's just for the US at the moment, is offering up a new try before you buy scheme to entice users into buying more apps.
The Appstore has already managed to bag Angry Birds Rio as an exclusive, and it hopes to offer a free 'paid-for' app a day, but it is the 'test drive now' feature that is what is piquing developers' interests.
Cooling off, heating up
Google used to have a 24-hour cooling off period on the Market, so users could get their money back if they didn't like an app. With the re-design of the store, this was cut to just 15 mins.
The Amazon Appstore is trying a more user-friendly approach. Load up Test Drive and you will be able to test the functionality of an app right there on the Appstore.
"Clicking the 'test drive now' button launches a copy of this app on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), a web service that provides on-demand compute capacity in the cloud for developers," said Amazon.
"When you click on the simulated phone using your mouse, we send those inputs over the Internet to the app running on Amazon EC2 — just like your mobile device would send a finger tap to the app. Our servers then send the video and audio output from the app back to your computer.
"All this happens in real time, allowing you to explore the features of the app as if it were running on your mobile device."
The Amazon Appstore UK release date has not yet been announced, but it can't come quick enough for us.
