That’s a bit of an obstacle on phones that can already respond to our “Hey Siri” “OK ” voice comms, but in actuality it only takes a few seconds. And on the Mate 9, you can set a knuckle gesture to open the app a little quicker. Once the apps are open, you can’t just go asking questions, however. At least not on the ione. There you’ll still need to press the microphone icon to the right of the search bar to start your query. On the Mate 9, you can either press the center button or say exa, it will respond. (Usually. On both the ione the Mate 9, I experienced some audio issues when not holding the phone near my mouth.) ile the Mate 9’s method is definitely better than the ione one, it’s still a far cry from the tremendous microphones built into the Echo Dot.
t’s talk
And exa’s quirky personality comes through too. Ask it to tell a joke, it’ll happily oblige. (Unfortunately, the jokes are just as bad on the phones as they are on Echo.) And you can also play games like 20 Questions Rock, per, Scissors, or have a little fun with the “ Says” mimic game where it repeats everything you say (within reason). But while it seems as though exa has been tailor-made for a smartphone, the experiences here are hardly perfect. ile it will tell you the weather, it uses the location you have saved in the exa app (which can be different on each device), not your current location as determined by G. The same is true for traffic reports (it sticks to your preset daily commute), there’s no way to access or Apple maps for turn-by-turn directions.
Falling short
But without hooking up with all of ’s services, it’s unlikely it will ever pose a serious threat to Assistant. at made exa a hit was its novel concept: an always-listening assistant in our homes. And that’s still the best place for it.
