Manual Privacy Options
This is a trend we’ve seen with the newest generation of smart home speakers and displays – people don’t want even the chance of anyone listening in, and they want to be able to control that. The old HomePod sort of hid its privacy settings, but it was based on the command “Hey Siri, stop listening.”
These days, owners want a more physical way to make sure that mics and cameras aren’t being activated, switches that disable them at the hardware level.
So whatever the new HomePod mini looks like, it needs to have a manual switch for directly turning off the mic so that people can ensure their privacy at any time.