“Hardware privacy dip switches for the cameras, the microphone, WiFi & BT, headphone jack (enabling UART) and the LTE modem (including GPS) are accessible under the back cover, just as on the original PinePhone.”
A physical switch that cuts the microphone beats any privacy setting in iOS. PINE64 admits mobile Linux is not ready for normal people. That honesty is rarer than the hardware. Apple and Google could ship a kill switch tomorrow, and they won’t, because the microphone is the product.