Huawei's excellent Mate 9 is now capable of talking to Amazon's Alexa assistant through an app that will be loaded after the phone receives an over-the-air update.

Hitting devices starting at noon ET on March 22, this will be the first (but likely not the last) Android phone in the U.S. to have direct access to Alexa through an app. But that's just it — Alexa is not available throughout the entire OS, from anywhere, like Google's Assistant. Instead, Huawei and Amazon worked on a custom app that's unsurprisingly called Huawei Alexa, which offers, simply, a single button to press to access the cloud service.

"At CES we shared that Amazon Alexa would come to the Mate 9," said Zhendong Zhu, president of Huawei Device USA, in a press release. "With the new Huawei Alexa app, we add intelligent voice control to the rich features already available on Mate 9. We look forward to collaborating with Amazon to further develop more voice-activated mobile experiences."

Presumably, whatever is available to users of the incredibly popular Amazon Echo is available through the app, though the lack of always-on listening lessens the usefulness somewhat. At the same time, its availability speaks to the lengths that Huawei is willing, and able, to go to differentiate its nascent product line in the U.S.

See at Jet.com

Press release: