Back in CES 2017, the Huawei Mate 9 was teasted to have Amazon Alexa running on it in the future. The day has finally arrived as we see a new voice assistant arriving to a non-Amazon smartphone. In a world dominated by Apple’s Siri and just recently, Google Assistant, Amazon has finally step foot outside its comfort zone, officially rolling out its Alexa voice assistant to the Huawei Mate 9.
Alexa however, faces an immediate competition, given that Google has already rolled out Google Assistant to supported Android smartphones, which obviously includes the Mate 9. With the Alexa app on Huawei’s flagship, users will have access to home automation, news, entertainment, and of course, shopping on Amazon. It’s basically what you would expect from a voice assistant, with the possible addition of more features for Amazon shopping. Alexa does come with a caveat however – you will not be able to activate it from any screen on the phone. Instead, users will have to launch the Alexa app to test out more than 10,000 skills that Alexa has in store.
Samsung will be bringing its own voice assistant into play as well when the Galaxy S8 series launches later next week. It will be called Bixby. Looks like it isn’t going to be just Apple and Google anymore come the near future.
Source: CNBC