Amazon Launches Live App Testing for Android and Fire Devices

Amazon recently launched a new developer tool called Live App Testing. The new tool basically allows the developers to distribute your apps in the Amazon Appstore to a pre-defined set of testers for the purpose of gathering feedback, improving quality, increasing stability and optimizing the experience before their app goes live for everyone to download. This testing apps feature can also take advantage of Amazon’s full suite of developer services, including in-app purchases, in a production environment.

Live App Testing creates a version of your app that is only distributed to select testers, which are invited by manually adding email addresses. Testers receive an invite via email with instructions to download the test app and begin testing against Amazon’s production environment (the full suite of Amazon services including in-app purchasing) on any Android or Fire device. Amazon ensures that only the set of testers you defined are the ones that can test your app. Once your app is running, you can either end your test, or promote your test to an upcoming version that has fixes and finishing touches in place.

What’s interesting is that Amazon is supporting Android devices, well it only further intrudes Google’s enclave, though it is not clear how far the support extends. It’s also worth emphasizing that this isn’t just for Kindle Fire devices: the tool offers support for all Amazon’s Fire devices, including the Fire TV and Fire phone.

“In house testing with side-loaded apps is great for isolating and fixing bugs, but it’s not enough. To be certain that your customers are getting the experience you want them to have, you have to test your app against a production environment,” said Amazon’s Paul Cutsinger.

Live App Testing isn’t meant as a replacement for in-house testing via side-loaded apps. Once you’re done isolating and fixing all the bugs you can, Live App Testing lets you test your app “in the real world” without having to handle setting up the whole test system.

The new testing service is one of many developer tools Amazon has rolled out in recent months. It also offers an A/B testing service, Amazon Maps, as well as APIs for in-app purchases, mobile ads, mobile Amazon Associates, device messaging, GameCircle (game data syncing), and login with Amazon. Earlier this year, Apple also acquired TestFlight, a popular mobile app testing service