How to install Amazon App Store and Amazon Apps on Motorola Atrix (UPDATED FOR UPDATES!)

[Ap0c]

I was all stoked when the Amazon App store came out, until I realized that it wasn't in the regular old Android market, and so my phone wouldn't use it. It turns out to be a good thing, though, since it forced me to learn how to sideload programs using sneakier methods. As a result, I learned how to get things from the
Amazon App Store, and now I have Angry Birds Rio and Fruit Ninja happily installed. It was a little weird, though.

Here's how. In steps!!!

1. Get the Amazon Market installed. I don't know whether the market .apk is the same for everyone, or if it is somehow 'special'. You can try downloading the one I got HERE and installing it. Tell me if it works. Otherwise, you'll have to browse to Amazon's website with your phone, sign up, and get the .apk file that way.

To learn how to sideload apps on the Atrix go to THIS PAGE get some edicashun.

2. Open the Amazon Market app and download something. Angry Birds Rio is still free as of this very second. That's a good 'un.

3. This won't work. You will have a nice little download, but then the dreaded SECURITY WARNING will pop up telling you that Mommy ATT knows best and that you better not trying installing scary non-market Apps on your precious Atrix phone. You will be sad, but not to worry, the app is still downloaded, we just need to go find it!

4. FIND THE APP! To do this, click the 'files' app to browse your phone's filesystem. Go to 'internal phone storage' then click the folder marked "Android". Inside that is a folder 'data', click that. Inside that, you'll see 'com.amazon.venezia', click into that. Feeling like a Russian doll yet? Next, there's a folder 'cache', go into that. Finally inside here, we see an .apk file, but it's named something dumb like 'vnz15934.apk' - not to worry, that's the file you just downloaded. You can click and hold to copy it somewhere less inconvenient, like your sd card, or just leave it there.

5. COPY THE APP TO YOUR COMPUTER AND SIDELOAD IT. I detailed this in
THIS POST. Plug in your phone to your computer, browse to the Android/data/com.amazon.venezia/cache folder, grab the .apk and copy it to your computer and then sideload it. DONE. Any app can be done that way, so now the Amazon market is yours for the taking. Not too shabby. The only problem is keeping track of the not-so-helpfully-named apk files. Oh well, maybe I'll think of something.

Like I said, I have Angry Birds Rio and Fruit Ninja from this method, so it works. Good luck.

UPDATE: After installing this for a bit, I began getting notifications that a new Amazon Appstore update was ready. If I clicked "install", I'd still get the notice "you cannot install applications from an unknown source for your protection you stupid person" I discovered that the Appstore was somehow downloading an updated .apk in the background. The problem is that the .adb method won't let you install an app that you've already installed, it throws an error. And if you uninstall the Appstore on the phone (Settings/Manage Apps/click Appstore - Uninstall button) the UPDATED .apk gets deleted. So, here's how to get the correct version.
1. When you get the notice about the update, plug in phone to computer, or open Files app on phone, go to Internal Phone Storage/Android/data/com.amazon.venezia/cache and copy out the file(s) there to somewhere else on the phone or computer.
2. Uninstall the Amazon app using the phone.
3. Plug in phone to computer again, use the adb method HERE to install the Appstore .apk file. That's it. Unfortunately, that's kind of annoying, but it still works.

[waterfoo]

As for file naming, I just rename them before or after I install them. If I have several downloaded but not installed, I just do one at a time and App2SD (great app by itself) tells me what I just installed and I rename from there on my PC.

Thanks for a great post.