The Amazon’s
Echo is a smart home appliance which acts as a portable speaker. It’s a 9.25
inch tall cylindrical speaker with 7 piece microphone array. The device comes
up with Wi-Fi and can stream music from certain music services such as Spotify,
Pandora from your smartphone.
Echo is connected to
Alexa, a cloud based voice service that could help out all sorts of useful
information, more specifically it is pre-installed personal virtual assistant,
which listen and responds to commands. Its listens with wake word Alexa. Alexa can help you in various
aspects such as adding shopping list, providing news, setting timers and
alarms, reading pdf’s, providing weather forecast, answering trivia, etc.
Alexa can also interact with various smart home devices such
as Philips Hue bulbs. It’s possible to turn off, on or dim the lights in room. The
device always keeps listening so you would able to ask any questions at any
time. Echo has ever growing list of thousands of skills and counting.
With a product like Echo you’ll find yourself using mobile
phone less frequently when you’re at phone. There are some privacy concerns
regarding the fact that Alexa always keeps listening our conversations and
still has lot to do. But ultimately the product can really help you in many
ways.
And the pathetic thing is Echo is yet to be officially launched in India. Though few services like setting alarm, streaming music may work, however location based services such as weather updates, maps,nearest restaurants won't work unless it's launched.
check out this video