I discovered by accident that the iOS app Battery Life, intended to monitor iPad, iPhone, and WatchOS device battery charge states of all devices from one device, no matter which one, also detects the existence and, in a more or less flaky way, the charge state of my rechargeable Quattro 961’s. Made me wonder whether the app at least can also detect the existence of other OEM MFi HA’s, Oticon, Signia, Starkey, etc. And also whether the app at least detects the existence, if not the charge state, of zinc-air battery-powered MFi HA’s of various brands.
The basic Battery Life app that can detect charge state is free in the iOS App Store under the freemium model. If you want the app to send notifications on high or low charge states of a device, the upgrade will cost $4. I discussed some observations as to why I think the Battery Life detection of HA’s is a function of the iOS Hearing Devices Accessibility Connected Devices settings and not just the ReSound smartphone app programming in a long-winded post here: Problems using ReSound Smart app with Cala and iPhone 6S - #13 by jim_lewis
Finding out what HA’s the Battery Life can detect gives some insight possibly as to how the various OEM brand MFi hearing aids are built on top of and latch onto the MFi plumbing that Apple has provided in iOS and WatchOS. So great if anyone else feels in an experimental mood and wants to test the idea, too, on their particular brand and model MFi HA’s.
I have Oticon OPN S 1 (not rechargeable but rather 312 zinc-air) mini-RITE aids. Battery Life shows 50% for connected devices and charger disconnected for my aids. The MFi tools and Oticon ON app also report 50%. Running on an iPhone 12 mini with iOS 14.3.
I haven’t figured out how the “charger disconnected” bit works. I’ve been looking for a difference in the Battery Life display when the HA’s are in their recharging case vs. not but I haven’t seen anything change down where that language is on the phone screen. I do get animated wavy lines when the aids are on and discharging (or charging) and when the aids are off, they moved to the Inactive Devices section but both aids don’t always come back to the Active Devices section when I turn both on again (part of my reason for saying the Battery Life app is flaky in detecting battery usage state of HA’s - something it wasn’t designed to do).
It would be interesting to know what happens with your zinc-air powered aids in the Battery Life display when the aids notify you that you need to change out the batteries. Very curious that the zinc-air aids are also picked up by the Battery Life app. Thanks for the report!
There is a hearing aid battery life indicator on the phone without the app. Swipe to the right from the Home Screen on your iPhone and then scroll down until you see the battery life widget. Mine shows a picture of an ear with a green circle along with an icon for my phone and watch battery life. I’ve also setup an accessibility shortcut that allows me to triple click the power button to get to the hearing aid screen and battery life is shown there too.
Hi Jim,
Yes, the app detect my Signia’s battery health. They’re not rechargeable though. Anyways, I guess this should be available in all MFi models, because that feature is integrated in the Accesibility menu, and its displayed on the HA’s app and the iOS widgets.
Yes. I forgot about that - which does come from the Hearing Devices applet tucked in the Accessibility settings. I guess that widget screen is called The Today View and can be accessed from just about anywhere by also pulling down from the top of the screen to get the Notification screen and then (picking a “dead” area of the screen) swiping to the right. The battery shows the charge for each ear for my Rechargeables. Melvyn’s post as well as Biggar’s previous post confirms zinc-air batteries show a “charge level,” too.
Must say it’s hard to find out the name of widgets. Just by guessing what the name might be (BATTERIES), I searched the Add Widgets function (accessed from the + sign in upper right when you pick the EDIT screen option at the bottom of the Today widget view). The Batteries widget says on its screen selection page “View the status of your iPhone and connected Bluetooth accessories.” So I guess it’s not just Accessibility-labeled devices that would show on the widget. But the widget is dedicated to battery reports. There are three available versions of the widget. My default just shows “ring meters” but other versions of the widget also give % charged numbers with or without the ring meters. (when editing the Batteries widget, swipe from right to left to view other versions of the widget).
Widex Moments here which are rechargeable. But the app typically always shows them 100% even at end of day. Even when in the charger, the app apparently can’t detect that. It says Charge State: Charger unplugged. Just like the Widex app always shows a full battery icon until it doesn’t when depleted. But never a percentage of charge left.
My experience is with a Signia 312NX and iPhone 6s 14.2. Both the Accessibility section of Settings as well as the Signia app show a “full” battery icon despite the fact this is the second day I’ve had this battery in the HA. (My other HA is a CROS unit so that is not reported on.) in fact I’ve never seen any icon other than “full.” The only indication I get on the phone that the battery is low is when it is no longer reported on because the HA is no longer able to support the BT connection to the phone. So basically… pointless.