HTC Sense Companion: AI-Enabled Voice Assistant Competes With Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa

This may be the year when an artificial intelligence-based voice assistant becomes a regular smartphone feature, like front-facing cameras already are. While 2016 saw Pixel’s Google Assistant, Microsoft’s Cortana and Amazon’s Alexa, 2017 has started with HTC Sense Companion, and we are still waiting for the impending Samsung Bixby launch.

Along with its new phones — the U Ultra and U Play — HTC introduced Thursday a new voice assistant called the Sense Companion. The voice-controlled assistant will let you issue commands to your phone, open apps, set reminders and more, all without physically touching the device.

The Sense Companion will utilize the secondary screen on the U Ultra, rather than blocking your view of the main screen, in case you want to use it for doing something else. So any information you request the Sense Companion for will be displayed on the secondary screen. In case you are using the Sense Companion in standby mode, only the secondary screen will light up, which simply means the voice assistant won’t be battery intensive.

One thing that the Sense Companion will take care of and where artificial intelligence plays a part is, it will take care of unwanted interactions. It will keep a track of messages you interact with and the ones you disregard. Based on that history, it will process them so your phone is not flooded with unwanted interactions. You can also manually upvote and downvote interactions. Over time, the Sense Companion will evolve according to your needs and usage.

HTC also has equipped its phones with hardware which complements the Sense Companion. The U Ultra devices will come with 4 always-on microphones while the U Play with come with 2 such microphones, so the phone can receive voice inputs clearly. The devices also have built-in voice recognition and will allow you to use your voice for biometric unlocking.