Free Voice calls
So you’ve got your Amazon echo (dot, echo, show..) and you’re fed up asking for the time or getting her to tell you a joke.
Why cant Alexa do something useful?
Well what about free telephone calls?
Before we get to that lets discuss Alexa communication and how to call someone from your echo.
You can call someone else who has an echo device or the amazon Alexa app on their smartphone.
In the app settings, select device settings and tap on your device name. Scroll down and click on Communication, make sure “Drop In” is “on”.
Now, at the main screen tap on Communicate and then Drop In which is a a automatically answered call like an intercom. A list of devices you can call will be shown or you can say to your device.
“Alexa drop in on <device>”
You may of course have a different wake word other than Alexa – and substitute <device> with the name of the device/person you wish to call. For drop in the recipient will have to enable drop in for you at their device. This is done via the app in the Communications screen, tap the contact and under “permissions” enable “Allow Drop In”
If you have a show device you can make video calls when using the drop in feature to call another Alexa device/app with video capability.
End the call by saying “Alexa stop” or “Alexa hang up”
Setting up for calls
First you need to register using the Alexa app on your phone. Open the app and tap on the Communicate icon at the bottom of the screen. Confirm your name and allow access to your contacts, then verify your phone number.
Make or Receive a call
It is as easy as
“Alexa, call <name of contact>”
The contact is looked up in your contact list, you may need to confirm the contact if there are multiple contacts with the same/similar details. for example home number versus mobile. Of course if you were to say “Alexa call <contact> mobile” then this will be selected.
Note that the light ring on your echo device will be green for the duration of the call. Alexa will announce incoming calls and tell you who is calling. You can choose to pick up the call or reject it,
“Alexa answer” or “Alexa ignore”
When you make an “echo’ to telephone call your number will be displayed on the recipients device, so if your contact details are in their phone your name will be displayed.
You can call someone not in your contact list by saying “Alexa, call <number>”
The number must be given in full, be aware that calls are not permitted to special, premium and non-geographic numbers (eg 111, 08xx and 09xx)
Keeping your contact lists private
Your contacts are associated with your account, if you set up a voice profile so that Alexa recognises you then other people will not be able to use your contact list.
See section on setting up your voice profile
Voice Profile
Allows your Echo device to recognise you and personalise your interactions for
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- Calling and messaging
- flash briefing
- shopping
- music
Say “Alexa, learn my voice”
You will be asked to confirm which account this voice belongs to and will give you a list of phrases to repeat.
It can take up to 20 minutes for the voice recognition to complete in the cloud, so you may have to be a little patient – this is not usual but it is possible.
When you are done say “Alexa, who am I” and you should hear your name and the account in use. If you have used your initials when setting up your Amazon account then Alexa will use your initial when reading out your account name. Just go to your account details at amazon.co.uk and update your name for a much better experience.
Additional account
This uses Household Profiles and allows you to share, for example, to-do lists and calendars. You can have 2 adult accounts and if you use voice profiles can keep certain things like your contacts separate (see above).
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- open the Alexa app on your mobile and go to settings
- tap Account Settings
- tap Amazon Household
- follow instructions to add a new account.
You can switch between accounts by saying “Alexa, switch account” – the account being used will be named.
With a voice profile Alexa will differentiate between accounts automatically as mentioned earlier.