Where most stand-alone speakers require the listener to hook up an audio cable or set up Bluetooth pairing, the Touch Mini, has a hidden mike that, when lined up with your smartphone, picks up and amplifies the sounds it hears to an impressive degree.
The mic is located in a groove along one side of the octagonal device. That groove is where you place your music player such that the speakers are covered by the groove. This slight cradling also allows for the Touch Mini Boombox to act as a stand for your phone. If placed so the groove is on top of the speaker, then the phone's orientation can be vertical, but it can also be rotated so that the phone is laying on a table horizontally, but be aware that there is nothing actually snapping your device into the speaker. It is just resting there, so you will want to make sure that the setup is as stable as possible.
Given that the cradle that has the mic in it is a specific size, not all devices will fit into the speaker's slot. For that matter, phones with anything other than a slim case will also not fit in the groove. To overcome this issue, the speaker does have a standard 3.5 mm audio in jack, which means that anything with a headphone jack can use this speaker, even if it is fatter than the design allows. Of course, this means it gets away from the "No Cables" feature that the box touts, but it isn't that much of an issue.
