Filed under: Retail, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch
First Look: Amazon.com app for iPhone/iPod touch
Today, the online retailer Amazon.com launched its first iPhone/iPod touch application. Previously, Amazon offered a version of its site that was optimized for MobileSafari. Amazon has added some pretty nifty features in the iPhone application that could make shopping online a lot easier. When you first launch the application, you are presented with your wish list, and the phrase "Get Yourself a Little Something." From this home tab, you can also see your signed-in username. When you tap the search tab, you are able to type in a search string just as you can on the Amazon.com homepage. Search results are featured in a descending list, ordered by relevance. You can see the categories for the search results by tapping the "By Category" button in the top-right.
Once you're on a product page, you are able to see the same information that you would see on the Amazon.com page, except compacted a little more. Tap the item name/price link, and you get a full product description. Tap the customer reviews section, and you can see all of the reviews. When you're ready to purchase, select "Buy Now," or "Add to Cart" at the bottom of the product page. The picture of the product will then "fall" into the shopping cart tab with a nice animation. You can also see a running count of all the items in your cart. If you decide you don't want the item, just tap the edit button and remove it. When you are ready to complete your purchase, select the "Checkout" button in the top-right corner of the cart tab.
Probably the coolest feature of Amazon's application is located in the "Remembers" tab. In this section, you can take a picture with your iPhone's camera and have it sent to Amazon. In a few minutes, you get a link to the Amazon product page for that item (or the item that resembles it most closely). Note that Mike Schramm's favorite iPhone app, Snaptell [iTunes link], has offered the ability to do the exact same thing for multiple shopping sites. The Amazon "Remembers" feature seems nice, and your results are saved on the Amazon site for later reference. In my tests, after taking the picture I received a link to the product page within 1-2 minutes. This definitely could come in handy if you're in a store and want to find out how much an item sells for on Amazon.
Amazon has really created an all-around great shopping experience for the iPhone and iPod touch. You can download this application from the iTunes App Store for free.
Gallery: First Look: Amazon Mobile for iPhone
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
heyrocker said 3:22PM on 12-03-2008
This is all very well and good but it sure would be cool if Apple would let them integrate their MP3 store.
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Jeff said 4:40PM on 12-03-2008
Ha, ha, ha. That's pretty funny. Competition? What competition?
YodaMac said 3:25PM on 12-03-2008
How secure is shopping like this with the iPhone? As far as typing in passwords, credit card numbers and the like?
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Jeffrey Hines said 3:42PM on 12-03-2008
You tie it into your amazon account that you created on the web, so you don't have to send credit card numbers from the phone.
Gary2002 said 4:52AM on 12-04-2008
Amazon Mobile app does not appear on the Australian AppStore.
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Snaab4 said 3:42PM on 12-03-2008
Nice App! It would be nicer if they had included the Gold Box and Lightning Deals links that they have in the Safari Mobile app.
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Georgina said 3:42PM on 12-03-2008
But it's not yet available in UK app store... that's very disappointing...
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who? said 3:45PM on 12-03-2008
I wish that that imaging thing gave you the optionto add the pic to their item's user uploaded photos, they need more of those.
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reallycrazyguy said 4:32PM on 12-03-2008
It's not Apple preventing the integration with Amazon's MP3 store. It's AT&T and the music industry (or Amazon didn't get around to doing it for WiFi connections). Apple would love to enable the ability to download songs over 3G, as they are only a couple of megabytes (probably about the same/smaller as many YouTube videos).
But both AT&T and the music industry are protecting the carrier's music stores, that sell music and ring-tones for $2 and up, rather than under a dollar for Amazon and Apple. If they let customer's access these cheaper stores on Apple's iPhone, other customers would complain about their total gouging when using other phones which can only buy songs from the carrier's music store for more than twice the price.
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Dr. Spaceman said 6:30PM on 12-03-2008
No, Apple wouldn't allow the Amazon music store on the iPhone. If AT&T and the music industry didn't require extra royalties for downloads over 3G or EDGE, then CLEARLY they would enable that on the iTunes music store.
Rudy said 4:34PM on 12-03-2008
that app is wayyy too much fun
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Elias said 4:52PM on 12-03-2008
How are the photos being processed? Mechanical Turk?
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Chad said 5:23PM on 12-03-2008
Yep, it's all turk powered, which makes me have a hard time resisting the urge to send inappropriate photos...
Of course I tried it out taking a picture of my coffee cup, which is a plain white mug and it said they couldn't find anything like that. I'm pretty sure amazon sells plain white coffee cups. I wonder if the turk pays even if the person claims to be unable to find a match. That'd be a bit stupid though since you could breeze through a bunch not doing anything...
YodaMac said 5:04PM on 12-03-2008
Interesting that it tells you the App is notyet capable of digital downloads. Would be great for music, videos and e-books too. Anyone know if a Kindle book will work on the Stanza app?
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Andrew said 5:33PM on 12-03-2008
Not available in Canada :(
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Tim said 7:30PM on 12-03-2008
Nice idea but I wish they would allow scanning of bar/upc codes instead of this somewhat wonky photo search. A app called shop savvy exist on for the Android platform and it works pretty well and returns results in seconds.
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Anderson said 9:15PM on 12-03-2008
Yes. The novelty of taking a picture of an item and determining what it is is cool but takes too long. Even with compression, uploading an image will always take more time than simply scanning a UPC and transmitting the code (The programmer of Delicious Library gives the iSight UPC scanning code out freely). Plus, its bound to be more accurate. They should focus on this method and use the image interpretation as a fall-back method for items with out UPC codes.
BTW, what's up with that Samsung/Ozzy Ozbourne ad hijacking my browser when I click to rate a comment. Even though the add has a close button, it blocks the entire page from view and the close button does not respond. I had to close my entire browser and re-navigate to this page. Needless to say, I didn't get a warm feeling about Samsung, let alone Ozzy, as a result of this cumbersome advertisement.
Chad said 11:38PM on 12-03-2008
It's not doing any image processing. It sends the picture to amazon, who puts it in a queue on their mechanical turk site. Then people look at it and try to find it. It looks like a two step process, where first it goes into a queue for $0.01 per image to say whether it can be found on amazon or not (this step seems horribly flawed, as all you have to do is randomly click one and flow through them). If the first step yeilds that it is something that can be found on amazon, then it goes to the next queue where for $0.10 someone tries to find it on amazon.
I signed up out of curiousity (I've made $1.80 so far!). It's a pretty flawed system since the first step seems to be irrelevant. I've seen some things rejected there that clearly could be found on amazon, and some things put through that really can't. The second step has no way to say 'uh, this person was stupid, this isn't on amazon' either.
But looking through the queue, right now it's mostly people trying it out and not actually shopping. Almost all of the pictures are of things handily nearby. Shoes on feet, keyboards, laptops, watches, etc. Oddly enough I find it kind of addictive to try and find a product on amazon from a photo, making $0.10 in the process...
Andrew said 10:49PM on 12-03-2008
Annoyingly: you have to retype your password when you go back to the Your Account section after some sort of session timeout period. That makes no sense. Amazon Remembers is pretty gimmicky, it'll be interesting if people end up using it beyond the "here's my coffee cup" stage.
There are small touches done right: swipe-to-delete an item from your cart (just like an email).
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rrdmxjedah said 11:06PM on 12-03-2008
Yea this is my only complaint also