Amazon’s Echo Shows have never been particularly effective in fulfilling the function that is taken for granted on devices of this type, smart speakers with a more or less large display on top that if necessary could be exploited to show us the souvenir photos kept on the Amazon Photos cloud, or more simply stock images, archive.
Amazon’s smart speakers with the screen so far had given up the Photo Frame function, rather the approach was to enrich the home screen with info on recent Alexa news, recipes or news, even bizarre. A couple of weeks ago, however, Amazon returned to its steps, announcing the possibility of using echo shows in the same way as the digital frames that were popular until a few years ago.
From words to deeds a few more days have passed, and now we can say that the news is official for everyone: those who own an Echo Show can ask Alexa to transform the device into a digital frame, a feature that until last month was only available on the huge and expensive Echo Show 15, which a few months ago we had tried in preview. The news concerns all the Echo Shows in the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, and fortunately also Italy:
CURIOUS LIMITATION OF THREE HOURS
Those who love functions of this type, however, can only celebrate halfway, because curiously Amazon has established that echo shows can play the role of a digital frame for a maximum of three hours:
Previously only available on echo show 15, this feature launches a beautiful three-hour photo gallery on your device, creating the perfect atmosphere for a party or evening. Simply say “Alexa, launch Photo Frame” and Alexa will automatically create your custom slideshow after linking your Amazon Photos account. […] You can also use the available images on artwork, photos recovered from Facebook, and stock images. To return to the home screen after enabling Photo Frame, simply say “Alexa, go to the home”.
As you can see from the image, the only information superimposed on the images is the date and name of the album from which they come. Who knows if in the future Amazon will leave the choice to the user on the duration of Photo Frame: for the moment we must settle for the maximum of three hours.
