Amazon MP3 for Android updates, adds lock screen widget but still no Cloud Player in the UK

The latest version of the Amazon MP3 app for Android includes a nifty little lock screen widget. This means that you can pause and skip tracks from your phone’s lock screen instead of having to longwindedly unlock the phone, load up the app, skip/pause, lock the phone again, carry on listening.

It basically allows your phone to function as more of a genuine replacement MP3 player.

To enable the lock screen function, load up the Amazon MP3 app as normal and head over to Settings – you should see the check box near the bottom of the screen.

You can also set the player to shuffle and repeat songs from the lock screen too. This gives the Amazon MP3 player a bit of an edge over other Android music players, whose lock widgets normally allow you to just skip tracks and pause/play.

Recently, the Amazon MP3 app added a music player feature, which allowed you buy, download and listen to music all from within the same app. A really neat idea, but the player was a little lacking, especially compared to more sophisticated offerings like Power AMP and MixZing.

The addition of a lock screen widget however greatly increases the Amazon MP3 app’s viability as a standalone music player. All we need now are some EQ options in the next update.

Sadly, there’s still no sight of the Amazon Cloud Player hitting the UK any time soon. This gives you up to 20GB of cloud storage for your tunage via the Amazon app which is pretty amazing. It’s currently only available in the US, but we expect to see an eventual rest-of-the-world rollout at some point.