HTC has its own virtual assistant called Sense Companion, and now it's available as a free app from the Google Play Store.
Virtual assistants are gradually gaining ground and virtually every major player got in the game already. Apple has Siri, Google has Google Assistant, Microsoft has Cortana, Amazon brought Alexa to tablets last year, and the party keeps going.
HTC may be a little late to the scene, but it's here. The HTC U Ultra and HTC U Play made their debut back in January and among a number of neat specs and features, they also touted their own virtual assistant from HTC.
That virtual assistant - HTC Sense Companion - is now reaching more HTC devices, as it's no longer reserved for just the U Ultra and U Play. HTC has released its Sense Companion as a free app on the Play Store, allowing owners of other HTC devices to take the new virtual assistant for a spin and enjoy its capabilities.
What Is HTC Sense Companion?
The new HTC Sense Companion is basically HTC's answer to Google Assistant, Cortana, Siri, and other similar virtual assistants. As the name itself suggests, it's designed as a companion ready to learn from the user so it can offer personalized suggestions and relevant information based on what the user is most interested in.
For instance, the Sense Companion app could offer suggestions for a restaurant based on places you've been or your current location, it could offer sports scores if you're interested in that, and other such information.
The Sense Companion will learn over time, which means that the more you use it, the better it will get at predicting and anticipating your needs. This, in turn, means that it should become increasingly useful in time.
"Introducing HTC Sense Companion - the personal companion that's always learning from you, and the things you do every day," HTC touts on the U Ultra product page. "Paired with built-in voice recognition, it's able to recognize your voice and respond. Just say the word to take or reject incoming calls, snooze or dismiss an alarm, send messages and even begin hands-free navigation."
While so far the Sense Companion doesn't seem to be bringing anything new to the table compared to other virtual assistants, it does have a few tricks up its sleeve. For instance, Sense Companion can detect if your device is low on battery and you might have an appointment that could run late, so it will recommend that you charge your device in due time.
For those who forget to check their device's battery level only to realize last-minute that they forgot to charge it and they have to head out, this could be a great tool to have.
The HTC Sense Companion can also display various details such as a summary for your weekly step count. To ensure that you can easily personalize your experience and weed out the information that's not relevant to you, the Sense Companion displays a thumbs up and thumbs down for each tidbit of information it displays. If it's helpful, give it a thumbs up so that the assistant knows to offer more information like that. If it's not relevant to your interests, just give it a thumbs down so you won't have to see more like that in the future.
HTC Sense Companion Compatibility
When it comes to device compatibility, HTC doesn't offer a list of smartphones that support the app. Sense Companion should work with most recent HTC devices such as the HTC 10, the HTC One M9 and others, but may not be compatible with older handsets. For instance, the HTC Sense Companion is not compatible with a European version of the HTC One M8. It remains unclear whether the compatibility issue stems from the device model or the region, but we'll keep you up to date as soon as we learn more.
If you'd like to try it out, HTC Sense Companion is available for download from the Play Store. If you've already tried it out, drop by our comments section and tell us what you think of it.
