I don't know how they work but I would assume that the mic is not always streaming, as you say it can't be due to battery.
I do not feel comfortable to assume that there is ZERO possibility that the mic can be made to stream without the physical button pressed ...
... unless I did the work to understand how it's wired and controlled, something I don't care to do. So I'll just assume they are unsafe spy devices until proven otherwise.
Having the mic on the remote always on and streaming back to the host would drain the battery in about a day.
Less. They're usually just a couple AAAs, so like 1800 mAh.
It's scary how much data you can transmit with those batteries on optimized hardware.
I have IoT things eating more data than a cheap voice call that last months.
I recall it being about a day when I worked on those exact devices. For comparison, my tiny Bluetooth earpiece can run for about six hours.
I don't know how they work but I would assume that the mic is not always streaming, as you say it can't be due to battery.
I do not feel comfortable to assume that there is ZERO possibility that the mic can be made to stream without the physical button pressed ...
... unless I did the work to understand how it's wired and controlled, something I don't care to do. So I'll just assume they are unsafe spy devices until proven otherwise.
Fair enough. I certainly don't have the schematics for any of those devices made in the 2020s.