Will the new menus and UI of the Mini 2 be available to the original Mini?

https://gearjunkie.com/technology/gadgets/garmin-inreach-mini-2-review

As noted, he's all about "oooh, it tracks for TracBack as soon as I turn it on"  I'm not sure I understand this point. First off, if you're worried about safety, you WILL be tracking (both "sent" and "logged" points) anyhow. And it IS possible to configure both the original and the M2 to automatically begin tracking when you turn it on.

I do not know what settings the M2 uses when automatically logging points without tracking. But no matter what, it's going to use the GPS radio to record the points. Which will use a certain amount of battery. This would be a bigger deal on the original Mini because the M2 has better battery life.

Matter of opinion, I guess. But IMO, this is not a "new" safety feature. It's present on the original mini if you configure it that way.

I think the only new (updated) non-hardware feature which is at least partially safety related is TrackBack.

But it's probably also based on new hardware (more storage memory). So, there is no reason to blame Garmin in adding safety features to Mini 2 without updating Mini.

TracBack exists on the original, you just have to choose it in the menu. Auto tracking is already a feature too. 

This https://youtu.be/rCYFy_IPSyc?t=133 is new, but, again, it's probably hardware based (more memory) update.

Yep. That's the thing he's all excited about. Hardware-wise, I think it probably has more to do with battery life. The GPS has to be used to get the locations to record. Still, you can configure either of the Minis to start REAL logging on power up. That's the true safety feature. If you really want safe, you want "sent" track points so that SAR has a starting point (even if your are disabled so that you can't send an SOS). And it's available on both. 

I don't (personally) see much value in a feature that is designed to encourage stupidity in the back country. :-D In any case, it's a bit of a tempest in a teapot.

I agree.  It can't be what you rely on, though I suppose it could come in handy.

If you do a COMPARE on the two devices from Sales website, there really are only a couple of differences in the functionality, but I don't see any safety features (like the thing where you fall and it auto-alerts). The device hardware has some updates, like screen resolution is now more square, memory, USB-C port, new GPS chipset for more coverage, and if you look at the Internal Memory Capacity and storage of points, it's annotated differently for the Mini2 from the old Mini way. It now stores like 200 activities, and 100 courses instead of one single breadcrumb track.  Maybe that's what the hype is about. Trackback allows for a true track back via the path you took, instead of just straight line, and directly on the unit itself vs Earthlink.

And I'm not sure why anyone thinks it's feasible to always push new features down to old devices (And how does that compare to the concept of slowing down an iPhone to force upgrades). You buy a device at a price that was based on development costs at that time. To think anything new should be developed and pushed (at a cost to them and not a cost to you) is ludicrous, and not even sustainable. And what if your device suddenly slows down to an unacceptable level, then people would be complaining about that, and Garmin would be on the hook for resolving that too.

Ultimately, to me it looks like it was developed to work more independently(without Earthmate and phone) than the previous Mini.

I was really just hoping for a SW update to use the new UI and menus.  I realize the screen res probably won't work for the new messaging widget, and I'll just use Earthmate or presets anyway, as that's easier.  I can turn on TracBack anytime I want or follow my own track on the app if I need to backtrack as my only way out.  Just curious.