All smartphones, Apple and Android, use dedicated audio processors which are always listening for the command word by saving recent audio to a buffer and analyzing it before discarding it.

There has never been any evidence that I've ever seen that these audio processors save and transmit their work pre-activation, only post-activation of the service.

Although I do remember in the 2014-2016 time frame when the CIA hack tools got released I believe there was a tool which could basically hot-mic certain iPhones through a zero day and use it to live transmit to a state actor without warning the user (minus the device getting hot from recording and network access).

I'm sure Android has similar zero days just as all software does.

> All smartphones, Apple and Android, use dedicated audio processors which are always listening for the command word by saving recent audio to a buffer and analyzing it before discarding it.

Not all Android phones have Google Assistant.

True, just nearly all.

>All smartphones, Apple and Android, use dedicated audio processors which are always listening for the command word

This is blatantly false. Many high-end android phones and all recent iPhones do this. A large number of phones do not.