Huawei Mate 9 was introduced in January in the US. Now the device is getting its own AI assistant Amazon Alexa. As of right now this update is only being rolled out to consumers in USA with rest of the users getting this update soon.
AI assistants are the buzz word for the year with different companies working towards improving or developing their own tech. Samsung recently introduced Bixby, their voice based assistant that will debut with Galaxy S8. Google last year introduced Google Assistant which has been rolled out to different Android devices and HTC with HTC U Ultra announced HTC Sense Companion which would over time learn and adapt to your needs.
Huawei has announced the Amazon Alexa integration but there are some key issues. You have to power up the app and then tap the mic button to get Alexa to work for you. Along with that right now it does not offer features like Music, TuneIn and Timer/Alarms which can be found in other devices.
Huawei is working on the integration and refining things for their device and users can expect improvements along the way. It does seem a bit unusual that Huawei would push an unfinished product for their device. Given that users can also make use of the Google Assistant on the device and that works smoothly in comparison to what Alexa offers Huawei’s and Amazon’s move seems like a half hearted effort to make Alexa the users to go assistant.
