Amazon Alexa Gets Outlook.com Support; Amazon Tap OTA Update Enables Hands-Free Mode

Amazon recently released two new software updates: one for its Amazon Alexa voice assistant and another for its Amazon Tap portable speakers. The updates come with Outlook.com support and hands-free mode, respectively.

According to The Verge, Amazon silently updated its intelligent virtual assistant, so Outlook.com users can now use Alexa to keep track of their Outlook.com-stored calendar data. Henceforth, Alexa clients can ask the voice assistant “What’s on my calendar?” and get responses based on the itinerary or events they stored on Outlook.com and Google calendars.

The Alexa update has been quietly seeded to the software of the AI assistant, so there’s no need for users to manually update their Alexa-powered devices. For users of the iOS and Android Alexa app however, they need to make changes to the Settings of the app to enable support for Outlook.com calendars.

Meanwhile, Amazon also rolled out an over-the-air software update for its Amazon Tap speakers. The update comes with hands-free support for Alexa, as reported by MacRumors. What this hands-free support does is enable the Bluetooth speakers to accept voice commands for execution. Prior the arrival of this hands-free mode, Amazon Tap users had to manually activate the voice assistant by pressing the speakers’ physical button.

The OTA update will not affect the longevity of Amazon Tap’s battery. Amazon stated that even when the hands-free mode is enabled, the speakers will still run for eight hours. The company also shared that the “listening” mode of the Tap speakers can be disabled by pressing the power button. This will help in conserving the battery of the device, as per USA Today.

Lastly, a new feature called “Echo Spatial Perception” is part of the new update. This feature sees to it that the Alexa-enabled device closest to the user will be the one to wake up when two or more devices are situated close to each other.