We and Nate at The Digital Reader have previously written about a workaround for watching Android Prime Instant Video on non-Fire Android devices. Until now, it required installing the Dolphin web browser and a deprecated Flash app, then setting Amazon Streaming Video to use Flash instead of Silverlight so that it would think you were watching video from a desktop.
However, now Android Authority reports that, at least for people in the US, Amazon has finally released an Amazon Prime Instant Video app for non-Fire Android devices. Of course, Amazon being Amazon, the process is still more complicated than you’d expect. You actually have to have the most recent version of the Amazon app from the Google Play app store, plus install a Prime Instant Video app that’s only available via Amazon’s app store, not the Google Play app store.
Android Authority only says it works for people in the US, though one of the commenters says he’s from the UK and it worked for him, too, so you might as well try it out. Ironically, this comes right at a time when I’ve temporarily had to let my Prime membership lapse because it came up for renewal right when I was at my low financial ebb in the process of starting my new day job. It’ll be at least the weekend before I can re-up and see if it works for myself. That being said, even having to install one app from the Play store and one app from Amazon’s store is a lot more convenient than the old workaround!
My friend who alerted me to this mentioned that he had some kind of problem installing the Amazon app—that he apparently had another Amazon app that was of a different version number, and not counted the same as the specifically-required Amazon app in the app store. He couldn’t provide any more specific details than that. I suppose if you have an “Amazon” app installed already but the Amazon app link above leads to a page that says “Install” rather than “Installed,” uninstall the “Amazon” app you’ve got and try again.
I have a report that it works in Germany:
http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/09/09/amazon-launches-prime-instant-video-android/#comment-611358
It would be great if it works fine everywhere. I”ll soon check it out.
It works great on my Android phone (HTC One), but no luck on my Android tablet (Dell Venue 8. It tells me to download the Amazon App Store app which is great, but once dowloaded, the app won’t open and install. It’s weird, because every other Amazon works without any problems.