Spotlight: Reverb turns your iPhone and iPad into a portable Amazon Echo

This might be the reason why Amazon chose to only enable its Alexa assistant on a select few dedicated devices, rather than make it yet another smartphone app. While users have access to an Alexa companion app, the full functionality was locked to the devices Amazon hand-picked – until now. Reverb, a free iOS app from Rain Interactive, lets anyone use Alexa from wherever they want, no Echo required.

Reverb has almost all the functionality an Alexa-enabled device does, including timers, alarms, listening to audiobooks, interaction with smart home devices, and more. The big unsupported feature, however, is listening to music from Amazon Music, due to restrictions put upon by the company. When opened, the app displays the familiar blue circle, and users interact with it almost exclusively through voice commands, just like they would with a real Amazon Echo.

So if you're one of the people who prefer Alexa to Siri, or if you're just looking for a way to preview the experience before buying a $180 speaker, Reverb lets you get the (almost) full experience, free of charge.