what's up guys wanna hear from Andrew 30
and back when the HTC u 11 was first
announced one of the more interesting
features that was announced alongside
the U 11 was the support for Amazon's
Alexa and this was not initially
available when the phone first went on
sale but it's available starting today
July 17th in the Google Play Store so if
you have u 11 you'll be able to download
it and we have a pre-release version of
Alexa on the u 11 so let's go ahead and
check it out and see what Alexa is like
on the HTC u11 alright so before we dive
into the functionality and everything
that Alexa can do on the U 11 let's just
take a look at the actual app itself so
the app is called HTC Alexa and that's
probably so you don't confuse it with
the Amazon Alexa app and these two apps
actually do work in conjunction with one
another and you'll sort of know what I
mean as we dive a little bit deeper
let's just open up the app here so as I
open it up it pops up from the bottom
screen and essentially just takes up the
bottom third of the display it's not a
full screen app and when you open it it
automatically just starts listening for
your voice if you don't want it to do
that you can just mute the microphone by
tapping the microphone icon in the upper
left corner and hit OK and just tap it
again to unmute there's a couple other
options here you have an info button and
this will tell you other commands or
questions that you can try with Alexa
and this is really useful if you've
never used Alexa before at all and if
you swipe down in your notification
shade you'll notice it offers even more
suggestions that you can try and I
assume that these will eventually go
away the more you use the service I just
think I haven't used it quite enough
just yet for that to happen we'll go
ahead and jump back here and check out
these settings for the app because there
are a few settings so you can change the
language here English is the only option
and you can also enable or disable the
Alexa keyword and you can also use the
Alexa keyword when the screen is off if
you want and you can also tie Alexa to
edgesense so if I squeeze the phone I
can actually open up Alexa just by
squeezing and you can see Alexa launches
there there's a couple other options at
the bottom you can jump directly into
the Amazon Alexa
you have it and you can also manage your
account by logging in and out as far as
what you can do with Alexa on the u11
the experience is pretty much the same
as what you would get on an echo or an
echo dot you can pretty much ask it all
the same questions or commands even ones
that require a skill now there are some
limitations and we'll go over what those
are but for now let's just go ahead and
ask you some questions and see what it's
like and we'll start with some basic
ones and sort of work our way up Alexa
what's the weather in Kansas City it's
89 degrees with cloudy skies tonight you
can look for thunderstorms with a low of
71 degrees Alexa what's the tallest
building in the world the tallest
building is Burj Khalifa no relation to
Wiz Khalifa okay that was a really bad
joke
scratch that Alexa buy me paper towel
the top search result for paper towels
is boundary white paper towels 12 huge
rolls it's 23 dollars and 85 cents total
including tax after a discount of $2 say
tell me more to hear details would you
like to buy it
no thank you Alexa turn off office okay
Alexa turn on office okay Alexa play
jeopardy
let's check it away the first category
is we're talking baseball
an ESPN article named this former
Cardinals 2012 deal with the Angels as
the worst contract in baseball who is
Albert Pujols
yes that's it the second category is
avian poetry love and constancy is dead
this mythical bird and the turtle fled
in a mutual flame from hand
I don't know please respond
alright so I think you guys get the
point but I did mention there are some
limitations and one of those limitations
is that you can't make calls or messages
directly from the HSE Alexa app and if
you try to do that it will just refer
you to Amazon's Alexa app instead and
that sort of makes sense because that's
one of the purposes of that app but it
does feel a little bit convoluted and
not all that intuitive another
limitation that you might have notice is
that there's no visual elements so even
though this is Alexa on your phone and
your phone has a screen there's no links
no text 10 no photos and this is not a
comparison video to Google assistant
that is definitely one area where Google
assistant has the advantage because when
it comes to things like movie show times
or restaurant recommendations it's a lot
easier and faster when you actually have
visual elements to interact with versus
just listening to Alexa read everything
off and if it does have a visual Elle
it will again just refer you to the
Amazon Alexa app instead so that's
really it for Alexa on the u11 I think
it will only get better with software
updates and it's pretty cool to have
Alexa everywhere you go and if you have
a you 11 definitely check it out on the
Google Play Store but that's it for this
video guys thank you so much for
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