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Google Assistant is a pretty good example of a good digital assistant, but there may be a population of owners of Android powered mobile devices that prefer using another similar service -- Amazon’s Alexa. For those who count themselves belonging to this group, they may be delighted to know they can now make Alexa their default assistant of choice.
It appears that one mobile user has found a way to configure Alexa as the default assistant on a Pixel 2 smartphone, and then shared his experience on Reddit (go visit the thread here). Based on the screenshot posted on the Internet, Alexa is seen as an item included in the Assist apps list, located in Settings.
Before this latest development, Android mobile users had enjoyed the option of selecting Microsoft’s Cortana as the default assistant, that is as long as the Cortana mobile app is already present in the handset. For those who wanted to do away with digital assistants altogether, all they had to do was select “None” in order to disable the feature.
Now with the ability to set Alexas as the default assistant, owners of Android devices now get to enjoy some flexibility. Apart from the Pixel 2, the functionality is apparently also present in handsets such as the Pixel, Samsung’s Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S8 Plus, Motorola’s Moto G5 Plus, Sony’s Xperia Z5 Compact, and the OnePlus 5, just to name a few (the list of compatible devices on Reddit is still growing as of this writing).
As for those who have not had the pleasure of experiencing what Amazon’s Alexa is all about, they can always give it a test drive. If they do not have the Alexa app installed yet, they can just go ahead and download the assistant from the Google Play Store. As soon as they have installed the app, it is just a matter of going to Settings and type “assist” in the search bar, and from there, choose Amazon Alexa from the list of options made available.
Alexa may be a digital assistant like Google Assistant, but it works differently in some areas. For instance, Google Assistant can be triggered by uttering the phrase, “Okay, Google.” On Android running handsets, activating Alexa involves long pressing the home button and then giving a voice command. It was more than a month ago when Amazon had decided to start expanding voice support to its other products, including launching hands free mode to more Fire tablet models (like the Fire 7 and the Fire HD 8 devices).
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