Kudos to Audible (@audible_com) for rolling out a standalone app for the Android platform. I’ve been a subscriber to Audible for the past 2 years and the experience on the iPod and iPod touch has left me complacent — after installing the public beta version. I used to think that “just listening” was a great experience, but the current build has an easy to use bookmarking feature, the ability to download new books from your library, and a bit of eye candy with the visualizer mode.
Previously with the iPhone, downloading audiobooks required a desktop sync with iTunes. On Android, you can do in-app downloads. With the visualizer mode, you’re basically listening to audio with a screensaver background. This mode activates touch sensitive features allowing to you drag across the screen to rewind and fast forward.
Right now the app suffers from Fragmentation issues as there are so many version of Android installed on many other phone brands so the experiences vary, unlike that of the iPhone. If you’re an Audible subscriber and have an Android-based phone (my copy is running on a Sony Ericsson X10), join the Google Group.
