Google re-enables touch control on Home Mini

The Google Home Mini is a $49 smart speaker, and is one of the most affordable smart speaker to support Google Assistant. However soon after its release, Google had to disable the touch sensor, as the speaker triggered on its own and started recording at random occasions due to the improper calibration of the touch sensor. 

Google was quick to address the issue and disabled the top touch activation feature  of Home units completely due to privacy concerns, preventing the speaker from accidentally recording everything. The single tap functions, which would start and pause music, snooze alarms and end phone calls were disabled as well.

Having said that, Google is bringing back some of the touch functionality with the addition of side press. But now instead of tapping the top of Google Home Mini, you will have to long-press the left or right side to play/pause music, end phone calls, silence alarms without giving voice commands to the device. Previously, you could only control the volume of the speaker by tapping on the side.

This will come as a firmware update with v1.29, which will roll out today. The update will start in the preview firmware channel. You can join the channel from the Home app settings. 

Source | Via