That discrepancy isn't explainable given a change in daily use. 12hrs vs 2 years is a 1000x difference. You're saying they expected people to use it 1000x less than they actually are? That's them expecting people to use it for 1 min per day, and people actually are using it for 16 hours per day
Low power electronics are all about low duty cycles: if it can be worn but asleep and drawing next to no power for 15 hours and 59 minutes, and recording audio for 60 seconds, they only need enough battery to run the processor for 60 seconds.
No one is using the thing like a dedicated microphone to record their entire day's audio, it's a note-taking tool.