Interesting things are happening with Alexa (the voice of Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Tap, and Echo Show). A recent innovation that was announced along side the Amazon Show was an ability to call directly between Amazon Alexa-enabled devices or between Alexa-enabled devices and cell phones. I think there some interesting potential here.
For test purposes, I set up a new Amazon Echo Dot at my Mom’s house and installed the current version of the Alexa app on my Motorola G5 (Android) smartphone. Following setup instructions provided on one of the links below, I enabled my smartphone phone number and contacts in the Alexa app, then ran some tests.
How-to links…
cnet’s how-to guide: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-use-an-amazon-echo-to-call-someone/
cnbc’s how-to guide – http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/11/how-to-make-calls-with-amazons-alexa-for-free.html
digitrends’ how-to guide – https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/how-to-make-calls-and-send-messages-with-an-amazon-echo/
Test results:
Test 1 – From my cell phone and the Alexa app, I selected the profile (I thought) I had set up on my Mom’s Dot and sent the message “Hello Mom”. I immediately got a call from my son asking “what’s up?” What I failed to understand was that my ‘Hello Mom’ message would go to EVERY Alexa device registered to the same user account. We have 3 devices on the same account in 3 different households. All said ‘Hello Mom’ at the same time. Hence the reason my son called. My Mom’s a little hard of hearing and had no idea I was talking to her so she didn’t know what to do. The moral of this story is use different accounts when you register different Alexa devices in different households.
My next test was to have my Mom call me via her Echo Dot. She simply said “Call Glen” and voila my cell phone immediately rings and we have a good conversation with very good call quality. Other than my little mishap with my outbound message, the Echo Dot to cell phone call worked great. This is all I have had the opportunity to test so far, but I can honestly say, this capability and it’s simplicity has great potential. As time permits, I’ll do more Echo to Echo testing, and think about other use cases, but for now, I’m pretty impressed with what Amazon has done and has made available across not only on their Echo devices, with also on Alexa-enabled devices like their Fire TV and tablets, and on iOS and Android devices running a current version of the Alexa app.
That’s all for now. I’ll update this post as I know more and have more time for testing.
