Does anyone use the Phonak RemoteControl?

@bluejay2025: This is exactly why I have one. I find it quite useful, but I don’t know how I’d feel if I had to buy it. I’m very fortunate in that VAC🇨🇦 supplies me with this accessory.

Boy in this day and age I thought everyone brought their phones everywhere

Nobody is denying that. But you take your phone with you in case there’s an accident or there’s an emergency. That was the whole point when cellphones first came out

@hass5744: True, but what point are you trying to make? When I’m fly fishing or cycling on a trail, my cell phone is safely stowed away, and my remote is on a lanyard around my neck. It’s much easier to use than fiddling with the knobs on my HAs when they’re in the EarGo socks.

The remote is redundant, in a way - but in a good way. That’s not an argument, it’s only a statement of preference.

You’re right. It’s redundant if you have the phone with you. The man said he likes to get away from civilization which I assumed meant no phone at all

Remotes are typically small and discreet.
They are also super fast to make volume or program changes.
My Cochlear remote can make changes from inside my jeans pocket. No need to pull the phone out and find the app or wait for the app to update.
Remotes use very little battery power since they are proprietary linked to aids or processors.

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I can’t speak for him … but you’re right - I usually carry my phone with me wherever I go. But that’s not to say that it’s always within easy reach.

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I haven’t got the remote yet but I have to put my thoughts on this subject.
I don’t like to use my phone for adjustments, apart from the long time to connect I feel it rude and impolite to be looking at your phone while at meetings or at dinner and such. A quick adjustment with the remote would be discreet and easy. I understand that using your phone anytime and anywhere is the “norm” now, must be my age showing :older_man:t3:.

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So what you’re saying is you’d rather be rude and impolite without anyone noticing. I’m just kidding. But it seems like a lot of money for something that doesn’t do very much

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You’re correct about the cost:benefit ratio unless you’re teaching/lecturing or serving as an interpreter in court. The discretion afforded by the remote control in these cases brings the ratio into the realm of the rational.

Once again, I must be clueless.
Why would using the remote be construded by anyone as rude?
I agree (because I’m old) that people fiddling with their phone while I am talking to them bothers me. On the other hand, using an obviously non-phone item for a few seconds would not irritate me.
Either:
*I would assume it was a medical device or something else that required immediate attention
*it would be over and done with so fast that I wouldn’t have time to stew over it.
I imagine an occaisional person might ask “What’s that?” and would be more than fine with it’s use. After all, it’s not much different than a cane or reading glasses.

I suspect that the actual uses will be quite a few more than I would guess at first. I have ordered one myself, but I find messing with a phone to be tiresome.

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Not clueless @molarface, but perhaps unaware of the fact that :

[NOTA: I’m not spelling things out to correct you - I’m just trying to make sure I’m not using acronyms and jargon that’s foreign to you, as a relative newbie - nor am I assuming you’re stupid.]

  1. Even though you might think everyone notices your HAs, in actual fact, very few do, unless you’re wearing UP (ultra power) BTE (behind the ear, but considerably larger than RITE (receiver in the ear)) devices. So they don’t appreciate that you’re fiddling around in order to hear. Sometimes it’s hard to hide the fact that, in actual fact, we are distracted;
  2. Many people - even spouses and partners of the HoH - are not aware of the accessories that are available to assist with the adjustment of our hearing instruments. Therefore, if they catch us fiddling with something, they often assume that it’s detracting from our attention to their speech, as opposed to enhancing it.

Once again, I implore you not to interpret this post as a challenge or a correction. I’m just trying to explain to you how little the majority people who have normal hearing know about the subtle accoutrements of our world.

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I don’t know. All I have to do is move my hand by my ear to get the same results. Which is not like an unnatural motion. Does the remote need to be programed by the audi or does it pretty much set up automatically and pair with the aids

My HAs were really simple to pair with my remote. It’s not a problem with the Oticon version. Phonak might be different, since my Unitron aids required the audiologist for pairing.

You’re right. As usual,a well thought out post.
This has got me wondering, what are the triggers that cause a phone to be so irritating? I was thinking that if the “mystery device” doesn’t have a screen, appears to be unable to enter or display text, most people would not feel slighted.
On the other hand, both the Phonak and Oticon remotes could be mistaken for a car remote and people might think you are starting your car for a speedy get away. I hate that.

@molarface: I dunno: you’re guess is as good as mine, but people in a personal setting (where they don’t have to be deferential, for one reason or another) get slighted when they don’t feel that they’re being listened to. (You can easily check that one out with a significant other, if you don’t believe me.)

I would wager that you’re going to be consistently amazed by what people don’t know about hearing and hearing aids, and equally gobsmacked by the myths in which they believe. [Edit: I’ll also bet you could tell some stories about what the average person knows/doesn’t know about teeth!]

By far the biggest myth wrt hearing is that - because we wear hearing aids - our audition has been corrected and “made whole” in the same way that spectacles perfect one’s vision.

You’ll see!

A speedy get away is even more insulting when you can hear the tires screeching and you smell the rubber burning. And there’s your myphonak app going connecting connecting…

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Wow this could be my fix! Here’s my issue and I think it might fall into your camp as well? I’ll be watching TV and then all of a sudden I want to lower the volume and poof my Phonak Remote won’t let me. With mine though even when I hit the program/bottom button it won’t get control back to me. So I’m left with shutting phone down, tv, tv connector and phonak remote. Once I restart everything I get it back usually for the night.

Any thoughts about circumventing or teaching this auto sense to stop what it’s doing so I don’t lose control of my remote? Thanks!

It is important to note that the remote will not work if the MyPhonak app is still launched on a nearby iPhone or iPad …and it doesn’t even have to be the active app that you are currently using. The app releases control of your aids only when you actually Quit the app. This is the case even with the most current Phonak aids, like the Lumity. My advice is just use the remote and never use the MyPhonak app, or vise-versa.

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Ah ok thanks. So canning the myphonak app I can just re-pair my HAs to the iphone native bluetooth for connection? Thank you so much this is great.