How to use Amazon’s Alexa app on your smartphone

Amazon’s AI-powered voice assistant, Alexa, is spreading like wildfire and we’re seeing more and more useful Alexa skills roll out everyday. It’s in robots, vacuum cleaners, and the thousands of third-party apps that tap Alexa for voice recognition. It’s also starting to make its way onto phones. You’ll only find it integrated in two flagship smartphones so far: The Huawei Mate 9 and the HTC U11, but you can install the Alexa app on any smartphone and use it to configure your Alexa-enabled devices.

We’re going to start by taking a look at how to use the Alexa app on any smartphone, then on the next page we’ll dig into the extra steps required to get Alexa working as a voice-controlled assistant on the HTC U11 or Huawei Mate 9 and explain what it can and can’t do.

How to configure Alexa on your smartphone

You can personalize the way that Alexa works on all of your supported devices (including the U11 or Mate 9) by installing Amazon’s dedicated Alexa app via the Google Play Store. There is also an Alexa app for the iPhone in the App Store, but, sadly it’s a lot more limited.

If you’ve never used an Alexa-enabled device before, it’s worth taking a few minutes to customize things to your liking. Tap the three-line menu icon in the top-left corner of the app to access the following:

• Music, Video, & Books: Sign into the services you want the Alexa app to use, but note that music services currently don’t work on the Huawei Mate 9 and HTC U11.
• Lists: Here’s where you’ll see items you’ve added (via voice command) to your Amazon shopping and to-do list from the Alexa app.
• All Skills: Here’s where you can browse, enable, and manage the thousands of third-party apps that extend Alexa’s functionality. See which ones you’ve installed by tapping the My skills button in the top-right corner of the screen.
• Smart Home: This menu lets you configure smart home devices you can control with the Alexa app, including smart bulbs, TVs, security cameras, and more. Tap Discover to find and set up new devices, and then organize them into Groups and Scenes to suit your tastes.

You can also tap the three-line menu icon, and select Settings to review your various Alexa-enabled devices, set names for them, locations, time zones, and even choose your preference for temperature and distance measurement units. 

That’s all the Alexa app can do on most phones for now, but Amazon has been working on deeper integration so you can actually use voice commands on your phone, just like you would with an Echo. Sadly, it only works with the HTC U11 and the Huawei Mate 9 right now. If you have either of those phones, hit page two to find out how to get started and what you can do.