How do phones constantly listen for voice commands like ‘Hey Siri’ or ‘Ok Google’ without draining the battery quickly?
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What this comes down to is the difference between software and hardware.
Software is slower and uses more energy. Hardware is specialized and efficient.
Picture this: Have you ever used a coin sorter? You dump the coins in the trough and gravity and the size of the coins are used to send the different coins down different paths and they all end up ready to be put into tubes. This works quickly and efficiently and no real thinking is done.
Compare that to a robot arm with a camera that looks at the coins and picks each up an puts it into a pile. This can get fast but it will never be as fast and efficient a the sorter. Think of all the wasted energy in just moving the arm back and forth. This is like software. There is just all this overhead and baggage that slows the process down.
Your phone has a hardware chip that does one thing and that is to listen for that command. It is efficient so it doesn’t consume very much power.
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