They build on the previous services launched by Alexa in the past year in connection with commuting, weather and sports and point out that the voice market is dominant.
Now you can ask Alexa to send information about your commute, traffic, or directions to your destination directly to your phone. Within the sound range of any Alexa-enabled device, just say “Alexa, what’s the traffic situation to the airport”. After Alexa provides you with the requested update, you can say “Alexa, send it to my phone”, at which point Alexa will confirm and send a clickable notification to your phone, which will launch route navigation in the default map app
It is worth pointing out that the Google Assistant on Google Home can already send information to the phone, including directions, traffic information and athletic performance. In this regard, Alexa’s new features seem to make the two assistants roughly equal.
In some related news, Alexa can now proactively notify you when the weather is bad. Say “Alexa, tell me when there is a severe weather alert” and Alexa will alert you when a severe weather alert is available locally.
In irrelevant news, Alexa last month obtain The ability to add items to your shopping list via barcode. Echo Show 5 and Echo Show 8-Scan barcodes of common groceries to add to the built-in list of voice assistants.
As of late January 2020, Alexa can also use voice to set timers and alerts for specific devices. For example, you can say “Alexa, set an alarm clock at 6 am on my bedroom Echo” or “Alexa, set a 5-minute timer on the Kitchen Echo” on any device.
