Suzanne Humphries
Amazon’s newly-added support for group video and voice calls on Echo devices, arrived just in time for the holidays. With in-person gatherings pretty much out of the picture right now, it’s nice to see even more devices gain the ability to make group calls and keep people connected, especially since Echo devices won’t impose time limits.
The new feature allows up to seven participants to meet up in a video or audio call on any of the supported Echo devices, including the Echo, Echo Show, and the Echo Dot. If you’ve got one of these devices, you can create and name groups in your Alexa app (for iOS and Android). Then, you’ll just have to say an Alexa command, like “Alexa, call my family” to launch a call with the group. Amazon will soon add support for group calls in the app, as well.
In the same announcement, Amazon shared some other new U.S.-based calling features, as well. A new Call Captioning feature will display real-time text captions of what other parties in one-on-one Alexa calls are saying, Amazon Chime and Zoom are now available on the Echo Show 8, and kids can now make outbound Alexa-to-Alexa video and voice calls on their Fire Kids Edition tablets or on a Fire tablet using the Amazon Kids app.
Source: Amazon
