Chrome for Android Beta to bring the speed and simplicity of Chrome to Android 4.0, #ICS phones and tablets. Chrome for Android Beta lets you take the the things you love about the +Google Chrome browsing experience with you:

Speed: Top search results are loaded in the background to let you fly through webpages as quickly as you can flick your finger.

Simplicity: Access an unlimited number of tabs and flip or swipe between them using intuitive gestures.

Sign in: Access your bookmarks and the tabs you left open on your computer from your mobile device, picking up exactly where you left off.

Learn more about Chrome for Android Beta in the full blog post here:http://goo.gl/M1r05. This release is available on Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich devices in select countries in the following languages: English, Français, Deutsch, Español, Português, 日本語 and 한국어. Download Chrome for Android Beta in Android Market: http://goo.gl/XeYWH

Do you have Chrome for Android? Like it? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

Introducing Android 4.0

Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is the latest version of the Android platform for phones, tablets, and more. It builds on the things people love most about Android — easy multitasking, rich notifications, customizable home screens, resizable widgets, and deep interactivity — and adds powerful new ways of communicating and sharing.

Simple, Beautiful, Useful

Refined, evolved UI

Focused on bringing the power of Android to the surface, Android 4.0 makes common actions more visible and lets you navigate with simple, intuitive gestures. Refined animations and feedback throughout the system make interactions engaging and interesting. An entirely new typeface optimized for high-resolution screens improves readability and brings a polished, modern feel to the user interface.

Virtual buttons in the System Bar let you navigate instantly to Back, Home, and Recent Apps. The System Bar and virtual buttons are present across all apps, but can be dimmed by applications for full-screen viewing. You can access each application’s contextual options in the Action Bar, displayed at the top (and sometimes also at the bottom) of the screen.

Multitasking is a key strength of Android and it’s made even easier and more visual on Android 4.0. The Recent Apps button lets you jump instantly from one task to another using the list in the System Bar. The list pops up to show thumbnail images of apps used recently — tapping a thumbnail switches to the app.

The Recent Apps list makes multitasking simple.

Jump to the camera or see notifications without unlocking.

For incoming calls, you can respond instantly by text.

Rich and interactive notifications let you keep in constant touch with incoming messages, play music tracks, see real-time updates from apps, and much more. On smaller-screen devices, notifications appear at the top of the screen, while on larger-screen devices they appear in the System Bar.

Home screen folders and favorites tray

New home screen folders offer a new way for you to group your apps and shortcuts logically, just by dragging one onto another. Also, in All Apps launcher, you can now simply drag an app to get information about it or immediately uninstall it, or disable a pre-installed app.

The All Apps launcher (left) and resizable widgets (right) give you apps and rich content from the home screen.

On smaller-screen devices, the home screen now includes a customizable favorites tray visible from all home screens. You can drag apps, shortcuts, folders, and other priority items in or out of the favorites tray for instant access from any home screen.

Resizable widgets

Home screens in Android 4.0 are designed to be content-rich and customizable. You can do much more than add shortcuts — you can embed live application content directly through interactive widgets. Widgets let you check email, flip through a calendar, play music, check social streams, and more — right from the home screen, without having to launch apps. Widgets are resizable, so you can expand them to show more content or shrink them to save space.

New lock screen actions

The lock screens now let you do more without unlocking. From the slide lock screen, you can jump directly to the camera for a picture or pull down the notifications window to check for messages. When listening to music, you can even manage music tracks and see album art.

Quick responses for incoming calls

When an incoming call arrives, you can now quickly respond by text message, without needing to pick up the call or unlock the device. On the incoming call screen, you simply slide a control to see a list of text responses and then tap to send and end the call. You can add your own responses and manage the list from the Settings app.

Swipe to dismiss notifications, tasks, and browser tabs

Android 4.0 makes managing notifications, recent apps, and browser tabs even easier. You can now dismiss individual notifications, apps from the Recent Apps list, and browser tabs with a simple swipe of a finger.

A spell-checker lets you find errors and fix them faster.

A powerful voice input engine lets you dictate continuously.

Improved text input and spell-checking

The soft keyboard in Android 4.0 makes text input even faster and more accurate. Error correction and word suggestion are improved through a new set of default dictionaries and more accurate heuristics for handling cases such as double-typed characters, skipped letters, and omitted spaces. Word suggestion is also improved and the suggestion strip is simplified to show only three words at a time.

To fix misspelled words more easily, Android 4.0 adds a spell-checker that locates and underlines errors and suggests replacement words. With one tap, you can choose from multiple spelling suggestions, delete a word, or add it to the dictionary. You can even tap to see replacement suggestions for words that are spelled correctly. For specialized features or additional languages, you can now download and install third-party dictionaries, spell-checkers, and other text services.

Powerful voice input engine

Android 4.0 introduces a powerful new voice input engine that offers a continuous "open microphone" experience and streaming voice recognition. The new voice input engine lets you dictate the text they want, for as long as they want, using the language they want. You can speak continously for a prolonged time, even pausing for intervals if needed, and dictate punctuation to create correct sentences. As the voice input engine enters text, it underlines possible dictation errors in gray. After dictating, you can tap the underlined words to quickly replace them from a list of suggestions.

Data usage controls let you monitor total usage by network type and application and then set limits if needed.

Control over network data

Mobile devices can make extensive use of network data for streaming content, synchronizing data, downloading apps, and more. To meet the needs of you with tiered or metered data plans, Android 4.0 adds new controls for managing network data usage.

In the Settings app, colorful charts show the total data usage on each network type (mobile or Wi-Fi), as well as amount of data used by each running application. Based on your data plan, you can optionally set warning levels or hard limits on data usage or disable mobile data altogether. You can also manage the background data used by individual applications as needed.

Designed for accessibility

A variety of new features greatly enhance the accessibility of Android 4.0 for blind or visually impaired users. Most important is a new explore-by-touch mode that lets you navigate without having to see the screen. Touching the screen once triggers audible feedback that identifies the UI component below; a second touch in the same component activates it with a full touch event. The new mode is especially important to support users on new devices that use virtual buttons in the System Bar, rather than dedicated hardware buttons or trackballs. Also, standard apps are updated to offer an improved accessibility experience. The Browser supports a script-based screen reader for reading favorite web content and navigating sites. For improved readability, you can also increase the default font size used across the system.

The accessibility experience begins at first setup — a simple touch gesture during setup (clockwise square from upper left) activates all accessibility features and loads a setup tutorial. Once accessibility features are active, everything visible on the screen can be spoken aloud by the standard screen reader.

Contacts and profiles are integrated across apps and social networks, for a consistent, personal experience everywhere — from incoming calls to emails.

Communication and sharing

People and profiles

Throughout the system, your social groups, profiles, and contacts are linked together and integrated for easy accessibility. At the center is a new People app that offers richer profile information, including a large profile picture, phone numbers, addresses and accounts, status updates, events, and a new button for connecting on integrated social networks.

Your contact information is stored in a new "Me" profile, allowing easier sharing with apps and people. All of your integrated contacts are displayed in an easy to manage list, including controls over which contacts are shown from any integrated account or social network. Wherever you navigate across the system, tapping a profile photo displays Quick Contacts, with large profile pictures, shortcuts to phone numbers, text messaging, and more.

Unified calendar, visual voicemail

To help organize appointments and events, an updated Calendar app brings together personal, work, school, and social agendas. With user permission, other applications can contribute events to the calendar and manage reminders, for an integrated view across multiple calendar providers. The app is redesigned to let you manage events more easily. Calendars are color-coded and you can swipe left or right to change dates and pinch to zoom in or out agendas.

In the phone app, a new visual voicemail features integrates incoming messages, voice transcriptions, and audio files from one or more providers. Third-party applications can integrate with the Phone app to add your own voice messages, transcriptions, and more to the visual voicemail inbox.

Capture the picture you want, edit, and share instantly.

Rich and versatile camera capabilities

The Camera app includes many new features that let you capture special moments with great photos and videos. After capturing images, they can edit and share them easily with friends.

When taking pictures, continuous focus, zero shutter lag exposure, and decreased shot-to-shot speed help capture clear, precise images. Stabilized image zoom lets you compose photos and video in the way they want, including while video is recording. For new flexibility and convenience while shooting video, you can now take snapshots at full video resolution just by tapping the screen as video continues to record.

To make it easier to take great pictures of people, built-in face detection locates faces in the frame and automatically sets focus. For more control, you can tap to focus anywhere in the preview image.

For capturing larger scenes, the Camera introduces a single-motion panorama mode. In this mode, you start an exposure and then slowly turn the Camera to encompass as wide a perspective as needed. The Camera assembles the full range of continuous imagery into a single panoramic photo.

After taking a picture or video, you can quickly share it by email, text message, bluetooth, social networks, and more, just by tapping the thumbnail in the camera controls.

A Photo Gallery widget on the home screen.

Redesigned Gallery app with photo editor

The Gallery app now makes it easier to manage, show, and share photos and videos. For managing collections, a redesigned album layout shows many more albums and offers larger thumbnails. There are many ways to sort albums, including by time, location, people, and tags. To help pictures look their best, the Gallery now includes a powerful photo editor. You can crop and rotate pictures, set levels, remove red eyes, add effects, and much more. After retouching, you can select one or multiple pictures or videos to share instantly over email, text messaging, bluetooth, social networks, or other apps.

An improved Picture Gallery widget lets you look at pictures directly on the home screen. The widget can display pictures from a selected album, shuffle pictures from all albums, or show a single image. After adding the widget to the home screen, you can flick through the photo stacks to locate the image they want, then tap to load it in Gallery.

Live Effects let you change backgrounds and use Silly Faces during video.

Live Effects for transforming video

Live Effects is a collection of graphical transformations that add interest and fun to videos captured in the Camera app. For example, you can change the background behind them to any stock or custom image, for just the right setting when shooting video. Also available for video is Silly Faces, a set of morphing effects that use state-of-the-art face recognition and GPU filters to transform facial features. For example, you can use effects such as small eyes, big mouth, big nose, face squeeze, and more. Outside of the Camera app, Live Effects is available during video chat in the Google Talk app.

Snapping a screenshot.

Sharing with screenshots

You can now share what’s on your screens more easily by taking screenshots. Hardware buttons let them snap a screenshot and store it locally. Afterward, they can view, edit, and share the screen shot in Gallery or a similar app.

Cloud-connected experience

Android has always been cloud-connected, letting you browse the web and sync photos, apps, games, email, and contacts — wherever they are and across all of your devices. Android 4.0 adds new browsing and email capabilities to let you take even more with them and keep communication organized.

The Browser tabs menu (left) lets you quickly switch browser tabs. The options menu (right) gives you new ways to manage your browsing experience.

Benchmark comparisons of Android Browser.

Powerful web browsing

The Android Browser offers an experience that’s as rich and convenient as a desktop browser. It lets you instantly sync and manage Google Chrome bookmarks from all of your accounts, jump to your favorite content faster, and even save it for reading later in case there’s no network available.

To get the most out of web content, you can now request full desktop versions of web sites, rather than their mobile versions. You can set your preference for web sites separately for each browser tab. For longer content, you can save a copy for offline reading. To find and open saved pages, you can browse a visual list that’s included with browser bookmarks and history. For better readability and accessibility, you can increase the browser’s zoom levels and override the system default text sizes.

Across all types of content, the Android Browser offers dramatically improved page rendering performance through updated versions of the WebKit core and the V8 Crankshaft compilation engine for JavaScript. In benchmarks run on a Nexus S device, the Android 4.0 browser showed an improvement of nearly 220% over the Android 2.3 browser in the V8 Benchmark Suite and more than 35% in the SunSpider 9.1 JavaScript Benchmark. When run on a Galaxy Nexus device, the Android 4.0 browser showed improvement of nearly 550% in the V8 benchmark and nearly 70% in the SunSpider benchmark.

Improved email

In Android 4.0, email is easier to send, read, and manage. For composing email, improved auto-completion of recipients helps with finding and adding frequent contacts more quickly. For easier input of frequent text, you can now create quick responses and store them in the app, then enter them from a convenient menu when composing. When replying to a message, you can now toggle the message to Reply All and Forward without changing screens.

For easier browsing across accounts and labels, the app adds an integrated menu of accounts and recent labels. To help you locate and organize IMAP and Exchange email, the Email app now supports nested mail subfolders, each with synchronization rules. You can also search across folders on the server, for faster results.

For enterprises, the Email app supports EAS v14. It supports EAS certificate authentication, provides ABQ strings for device type and mode, and allows automatic sync to be disabled while roaming. Administrators can also limit attachment size or disable attachments.

For keeping track of incoming email more easily, a resizable Email widget lets you flick through recent email right from the home screen, then jump into the Email app to compose or reply.

Android Beam lets you share what they are using with a single tap.

Innovation

Android is continuously driving innovation forward, pushing the boundaries of communication and sharing with new capabilities and interactions.

Android Beam for NFC-based sharing

Android Beam is an innovative, convenient feature for sharing across two NFC-enabled devices, It lets people instantly exchange favorite apps, contacts, music, videos — almost anything. It’s incredibly simple and convenient to use — there’s no menu to open, application to launch, or pairing needed. Just touch one Android-powered phone to another, then tap to send.

For sharing apps, Android Beam pushes a link to the app’s details page in Android Market. On the other device, the Market app launches and loads the details page, for easy downloading of the app. Individual apps can build on Android Beam to add other types of interactions, such as passing game scores, initiating a multiplayer game or chat, and more.

Face recognition lets you unlock your phone with your face.

Face Unlock

Android 4.0 introduces a completely new approach to securing a device, making each person’s device even more personal — Face Unlock is a new screen-lock option that lets you unlock your device with your face. It takes advantage of the device front-facing camera and state-of-the-art facial recognition technology to register a face during setup and then to recognize it again when unlocking the device. Just hold your device in front of your face to unlock, or use a backup PIN or pattern.

Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth HDP

Support for Wi-Fi Direct lets you connect directly to nearby peer devices over Wi-Fi, for more reliable, higher-speed communication. No internet connection or tethering is needed. Through third-party apps, you can connect to compatible devices to take advantage of new features such as instant sharing of files, photos, or other media; streaming video or audio from another device; or connecting to compatible printers or other devices.

Android 4.0 also introduces built-in support for connecting to Bluetooth Health Device Profile (HDP) devices. With support from third-party apps, you can connect to wireless medical devices and sensors in hospitals, fitness centers, homes, and elsewhere.

Source: Android

For $199, it’s hard to find anything we didn’t like about the Amazon Kindle Fire. Msnbc.com’s Wilson Rothman explains how it works.

Source: MSNBC – By Wilson Rothman

This won’t be one of those long technical reviews. You’re reading this to make sure that the Amazon Kindle Fire you already know you want is up to snuff, and well, it is. I’ve had it since Thursday — reading, watching video, listening to music, checking email, even playing some games — and I can say it’s tight. Turn it on and you know what to do, like with an Apple product. So much like an Apple product that Apple should be scared.

It’s a 7-inch tablet, which means that it’s half as big as an iPad, and way closer in size to a paperback book. It could be a little easier to grip, but Amazon went minimalist here, rather than opting for some weird-looking ergonomics. Because of the size, reading is easier than on an iPad, though kids’ entertainment and other engrossing interactive content isn’t as fun. And because the Fire is widescreen, unlike the more 4×3 iPad, videos look almost as big as they do on Apple’s much larger device. As far as screen quality goes, it’s on par with the iPad. In other words, as an opening move, hardware-wise, Amazon’s getting it right.

If you buy the Fire from Amazon’s website, it comes with your login information already onboard, so you just confirm that you are you, and you’re off. The top of the home screen has labeled categories: Newsstand, Books, Music, Video, Docs, Apps and Web. Any Kindle e-books you ever bought show up in the library archive, any music you bought or uploaded to Amazon’s Cloud Player shows up in music, and any video in your locker is there, too. There’s a gallery of apps that you may have purchased from Amazon’s app store (excuse me, "Appstore"). And by design, each page of stuff you own is just a click away from a store where you can get a ton more.

The Silk browser on the Kindle Fire is nearly as smooth as its namesake.

Amazon’s Appstore is a huge asset. Because it is tied to Amazon’s own purchasing system, it’s easier for you to buy apps from a trusted source. And because Amazon went with quality over quantity, it lacks the feel of Google’s Android Market, which can get so slimy that it could use a hosing down from time to time. Not every app you want is in the Amazon Appstore, but the company is already getting some of the best stuff out there — including apps from competitors like Netflix and Hulu — and developers who see the Kindle Fire will work just as hard to get their "A" material in front of Fire buyers.

The rest of the home screen is a combination of two well-known Apple design elements. Up top, there’s a "cover flow" of all recent items, be they book, app, movie or Web page. Underneath is an iBooks-like shelving system, where you can pin and rearrange your favorite media items. Rip-off or not, the interface works well enough. The Fire is certainly more fluid than the Kindle e-reader, which succeeds in spite of its user interface.

Amazon Prime lets you borrow a book a month at no extra cost, and some of the titles are bestsellers.

Speaking of fluid, the Fire’s Silk browser is nice and quick, and only gets faster as it wises up to your browsing patterns. If you always hit the msnbc.com home page then jump to Tech/Sci, it will start caching Tech/Sci in anticipation of your click. And though it tends to trigger the mobile versions of websites, it has few problems with the full versions, including embedded video and other features. I did encounter a broken page once, apparently caused by an ad loading funny, but troubles have been minor to date.

It’s easy to see that Amazon Prime will be a requirement for most Fire buyers, and not only because it’s the best way to get Julia Child’s original series "The French Chef" instantly on demand. Prime videos, movies and books could account for a huge chunk of your media diet, and represent the best value. It’s a shame Amazon doesn’t have a Spotify-like component for on-demand music, but I suspect that would eat too much into its MP3 sales.

The biggest downside to Prime video is that it’s like Netflix, and only works when you’re connected to the Internet. That means that, in an airplane or a car, you are likely in trouble. You can connect the Kindle Fire to your PC or Mac and easily copy over home videos and movies you rip from DVD (DVDs you own, hopefully). Still, the main way to take videos with you into a no-bandwidth zone is to rent or buy them, so you can download them to the Fire. Beware, because with a total of 8GB on board, you only have enough storage for 10 movies or 800 songs, but certainly not both. There’s no step-up model, like there is with the iPad, and there’s no SD card slot, like on the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet.

As you wander through the Kindle Fire interface, it’s not easy to get lost, partly because the categories are so cut-and-dry, and partly because you can nearly always see a home button to take you back when things get muddy. But I say "nearly" because in some apps, you have to click a few times to even see the home button. This inconsistency made me miss the physical home button found on the iPad and many Android devices. While we’re on the subject, I also missed volume up/down buttons, and wish that the on/off button wasn’t located on the bottom, where it’s so easily pressed on accident.

But these are design issues that don’t really interfere with the overall potency of the product, especially since much of the potency comes from that $199 price tag. What does matter is battery life. Amazon says it’s "up to 8 hours of continuous reading, or 7.5 hours of video playback, with wireless off." That’s not as good as an iPad, which is rated for up to 10 hours of continuous use. I didn’t run it into the ground in one sitting, but I managed to go several days of regular use between charges. Again, an iPad can go longer — mine lasts nearly a week between charges. Still, the Fire’s battery life ought to be satisfactory for most people.

So while we’re on the subject of iPad, let’s have the talk. No, the Kindle Fire is not anywhere close to being the precision machine that the iPad 2 is. There are no cameras and no microphone. The Fire’s screen is half the size of the iPad’s, and the Fire’s battery life isn’t as good, yet the Fire is still a hair thicker. The Fire interface, while seductively simple, lacks the nuances — the futuristic animations and fades — that keep Apple on top.

But for Apple, this still spells trouble. The Kindle Fire can handle about 80 percent of what I want to do on an iPad, for 40 percent of the price. And much of what’s missing won’t be missing for long. Even if you can justify buying one iPad, you may look to the Fire as a second device in your high-tech home. And if you can’t justify an iPad this holiday season, you might consider Amazon’s alternative.

Later this week, we’ll be looking at the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet, the closest thing to competition that the Kindle Fire will see in its class and price range. Though Barnes & Noble already has momentum from selling the Nook Color, it’s hard to see how the book retailer could outsell Amazon in this space, especially since Amazon is a digital media powerhouse, and these tablets are about more than reading. We keep an open mind, though, not least of all because the Nook specs are impressive. But for the moment, and perhaps for the time being, Kindle Fire is well worth its amazingly low price.

Source: MSNBC – By Wilson Rothman

Google+ App Gets Update to Version 1.0.6, Brings Reshare, Bug Fixes, And Other Convenient Tweaks

Google+, the titular search giant’s latest entry into the social networking scene, has seen some success so far, and of course a mobile app is a critical step in making the service usable and popular. Android’s Google+ app got an update to version 1.0.6 recently, bringing a few much-needed conveniences as well as support for a ton of new languages.

Here’s a list of just what this update includes:

• The ability to reshare a post

• The app is now available in 38 languages
• Incremental Improvements to notification reliability
• Clearer instant upload options in the initial setup dialog
• A host of bug fixes

If you haven’t already, head over to the Android Market and grab the Google+ update.

Source:  Android Police

Android users now can now update to the latest version of the Google+ app from their Android phone or the Android Market. Google+ Android app (v.1.0.5) brings several improvements to the mobile version. Check out the video below from Google’s Mobile Project Manager +Punit Soni.

v1.0.5
August 2, 2011

T-Mobile MyTouch 4G Slide caught in wild, looks darn sexy

Source: By Phil Nickinson   19 Jun 2011 11:01 am

Well, well. What have we here? It’s the long-rumored T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide. And, boy howdy, does that look like a fine piece of smartphone, now that it’s far less blurry than the last time it poked up its head.

Let’s talk about what we can glean from the pics: There’s the obvious four-row sliding keyboard. And we’d wager it’s as good as any out there, given that it’s made by HTC. Note that the "G" button remains, a holdover from the original keyboardless myTouch 4G. We could take it or leave it. (Leaning toward the latter.) Also note that in addition to the dedicated .com key, its alternate function is www. Nice!

It’s also said to have an updated Espresso UI (Gingerbread, says TmoNews’ source), but otherwise keeps the overall look and feel (including the heft) of the original myTouch 4G.

Still no word on when we’ll officially see this guy. But it’s already gone through the FCC, and it’s likely in the hands of civilian testers now. So hopefully sooner rather than later. More pics are at the source link.

Source: TmoNews

If you’ve been using Android for the past couple of years, you may have noticed that there’s no elegant way to take screenshots without either rooting the device, or having to set up the SDK. Installing the SDK and rooting your Android phone isn’t hard these days, but it may not be worth just to take screenshots. Well, to our surprise the T-Mobile G2X, as well as its European cousin, the Optimus 2X take screenshots easily.

While sifting through the XDA forums, I came across a problem I’ve seen with Tegra 2 devices. Screenshots, whether you’ve rooted your device or use the built-in ddms program from the SDK, do not come out right. You’re either given a blank screen, or like the G2X, LG’s logo. Well, it looks like LG thought this one through, and all you need to do to take a screenshot is press Power + Home at the same time. Easy.

We hope to see more handset makers implement this simple feature that iPhone users have had since iOS 2.x. We’ve seen some custom Android ROMs implement the feature similarly, like MIUI, but we’ve never seen it officially implemented until now (unless we’ve been missing this the entire time, which likely isn’t the case). Screenshots may not be the most important feature around, but not having an easy way to take them can be frustrating when you want to take one and you’re not rooted or next to a computer.

While this likely won’t be the determining factor for purchasing the G2X, it certainly adds to the reasons we think this device is about as solid as a phone can come today. LG is making some serious strides in the Android landscape, and something as simple as this makes us love what they are doing even more.

So with two phones down, and hundreds to go, let’s hope this feature is implemented within Android itself in a future release.

Source: IntoMobile

Best Buy is now offering the Acer Iconia Tab A500 for $449.99. The Acer tablet features a 10.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel display, 1 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, and Google Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system.

The Iconia Tab A500 has 16GB of storage and 802.11b/g/n WiFi. This model doesn’t feature any 3G option, but at $450, it’s one of the cheapest 10 inch tablets available with Android 3.0.

The tablet measures 10.2 ” x 7″ x 0.5″ and weighs 1.7 pounds.

You can check out more photos after the break.

via Mashable

Source: liliputing

Hands-on with the Cricket LG Optimus C – http://pulsene.ws/16Msi

Cricket continue to release Android phones.  Check out the latest by the low cost carrier.

Amazon’s Android App Store Launches: Test Drive Apps Directly From Your Browser

This morning Amazon is officially launching its Android App Store — a storefront for apps that will compete directly with Google’s official Android Market. We first broke the news about the impending App Store back in September and had some thorough coverage on the details in January when it opened to developer submissions. But now the store is finally going live to consumers (it will be rolling out over the course of the day, so you may not be able to access yet). And while there were leaks abound about this morning’s launch, there are still a few details that Amazon managed to keep quiet.

The biggest one: Amazon will let you ‘Test Drive’ nearly any Android application in the App Store directly from your browser using some very interesting technology. Click the ‘Test Drive’ button, and Amazon will launch an emulated instance of Android on its EC2 cloud, which you’ll be able to control directly from your browser (it uses Flash). Some features won’t work right now (like functions that take advantage of the phone’s accelerometer) but you should be able to at least get the gist of what you’re buying. Amazon was unable to give me early access to this prior to today’s launch, but I’ll update with my impressions as soon as I get to try it out.

The other big revelation is Amazon’s free app-of-the-day. Every day, Amazon will be choosing a premium application and making it free to consumers, giving people a reason to check in on the store on a frequent basis. This is made possible by the fact that Amazon, not developers, sets the pricing of each application. Here’s how I described the pricing model in my previous post:

The biggest departure from the mobile app stores we’ve grown accustomed to involves pricing. Unlike Apple’s App Store and Android Market, where developers can set their price to whatever they’d like, Amazon retains full control over how it wants to price your application. The setup is a bit confusing: upon submitting your application, you can set a ‘List Price’, which is the price you’d normally sell it at. Amazon will use a variety of market factors to determine what price it wants to use, and you get a 70% cut of the proceeds of each sale (which is the industry standard). In the event that Amazon steeply discounts your application, or offers it for free, you’re guaranteed to get 20% of the List Price.

In other words, if your app gets picked for Amazon’s deal of the day, you’re entitled to 20% of the list price that you previously set. That may not sound like much, but these daily specials are probably going to see download counts that are far higher than normal.

To coincide with the launch, Amazon is also announcing (as has been previously reported) that it has exclusive rights to the Rio version of Angry Birds, which is a tie-in to an upcoming feature film. The game will normally sell for 99 cents, but will be available free for a limited time. This is a smart move on Amazon’s part, as it will give legions of Angry Birds fans a reason to check out the store in the first place (and will also likely prompt word-of-mouth exposure as friends show off their ‘special’ version of the game to each other).

The App Store is a bold move on Amazon’s part because it’s going head-to-head with Google’s official Android Marketplace — and it may actually provide some serious competition. Unlike Android Market, which has a very open submission process, Amazon will be screening every application to ensure that it meets a certain standard of quality (it isn’t a high bar, but at least you’ll be assured the app won’t crash at launch). Amazon will also be undercutting Google’s marketplace on pricing. And it’s going to be recommending applications to users — even when you’re browsing physical goods on Amazon (if you’re checking out a baseball bat, it might recommend a baseball game for your phone).

Of course, while you can access Amazon’s App Store from both its website and a mobile application, it isn’t coming pre-installed on most Android phones the way Market is, so it’s going to take a while to gain traction. But that will likely change. Expect Amazon to work out deals with carriers to come preloaded on phones. And my hunch is that the store will become very important for various splintered versions of Android that aren’t backed by Google, not the least of which could come from Facebook.

Oh, and just in time for the launch, Apple is suing Amazon over its use of the name ‘App Store’.

Source: Information provided by CrunchBase