#157

Sound like the horse is out of the barn door for you. But I find the combination of my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and a Galaxy Gear S3 Frontier watch great for health tracking. I get about 2.5 days of battery life (but I’m always charging incrementally, going between about 30% and 60%, to maximize watch battery life span, rather than going to 100% charge. But besides fitness activity, which is very accurate if you turn on phone GPS, too, I like the sleep monitoring activity. At least previous Apple watches could not do that because they had to be charged overnight. The heart rate monitoring is pretty accurate, too, as compared to my Polar S625X watch with chest strap (and you can get a Gear watch app that allows you to monitor heart rate via a chest strap, too, and send data through your watch to the cloud). Relative to Windows 10 stability, I have FIVE home computers all running the latest version of Windows 10 (October 2018 upgrade) and have little or no problem with system stability, old app functionality, etc. The other thing you might want to consider is that Microsoft is moving in the direction of making Android its mobile operating system. In the near future using the MS Android app Your Phone, you should be able to mirror your Android phone and its apps on your PC, i.e., launch on the phone but see on your PC screen and operate via your PC the Android app. So if you’re a Windows rather than a Mac user, you may be limiting your possibilities as time goes by. But Android like Windows, with all the different devices it tries to support, is a mess, so going Apple wholeheartedly might not be a bad option. Since I’m approaching 73 and have a lifetime of Windows/MS DOS stuff that I can still run all the way back to 1982 through virtual machines, I’m not too likely to suddenly become an Apple user just for HA’s. I trust Google will make an HA streaming solution that really works and becomes widespread if it doesn’t want to lose the ball game to Apple.

Engadget article on Your Phone

By the way, it looks like the just announced Surface Headphones would make a great OTC HA supplement. Someone that I trust has had an opportunity to try them says that the noise cancellation and the sound are truly awesome. If MS would just add a frequency equalizer function to at least somewhat compensate for age-related high frequency hearing loss, they’d be even more attractive to me. Am awaiting further details on product, which weighs in at $349. Appears from accessories that it can be used as either as a BT device with 33-hour battery life (charges in 2 hours) or as a wired headphone, too.

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#158

I’m not a regular Windows user. I’ve run Linux now for over 20 years. I used DOS and OS2 before that. Remember DESQview? It allowed windowed apps using DOS before MS started Windows. I prefer Linux for a few reasons, and have used it since it was primarily command line driven. I have an older mostly retired laptop with Linux and Win 7 dual boot, my current desktop is Linux with Win 10 dual boot. I get into the Windows partition maybe 5 times a month at the most.

Android is essentially Linux and all terminal commands are the same, so is the kernel, just that Android runs an older smaller version, but is still in active development. The health tracking, nutrition, sleep, exercise worked well on my Pixel 2 XL and LG Watch Sport, but it was all different apps with no central integration. Apple puts it all together and I can see nutrition, exercise, sleep, etc. all in one view and see how one affects the other . I get over 2 days on my Apple Watch 4 now, so sleep tracking is easy. My old LG had to be charged morning and night to be able to use it round the clock, minus an hour charge time twice a day.

The biggest thing is that podcast, music, and phone calls are distortion free with the iPhone and not with the Android with Phone Clip+. I’m convinced the PC+ is the real culprit since it only has bluetooth 2.0, and it was just a PITA with the time it took each time to connect and relay audio to the HAs. With the iPhone it is seamless. I have to hand it to Apple with their MFI, even if it is proprietary, so many hearing aids support it. It looks like Googles implementation will require new and more costly hearing aids. I’m not getting rid of the Pixel at all, and will watch the Google evert with great interest on October 9th.

I’m long way from becoming a full Apple fan boy. :slight_smile: I still subscribe to Google services and have Google Home speakers and Chromecast, a Pixelbook (chromebook laptop) and my primary mobile number is Google Voice, forwarded to the iPhone number. I’m using most of the Google apps I know well on the iPhone, Play Music, GMail, Chrome, Drive, Photos, Calendar, Google +, Assistant, etc. The only thing that pushed me to try iPhone was the hearing aids, and that may change in the future, who knows? Now seeing all the Accessibility setting Apple has compared to Android is a real eye opener for me!

I did check the Surface Headphones, they look interesting. I still miss the good music sound, and streaming to hearing aids is poor. I tried full over the ear headphones and could not stop the HA feedback, so they were returned. I keep looking for some earbuds that will work with the HAs, but nothing I really like so far. I’m listening to more podcast and less music now, which is better for my ongoing education as I approach 70. :grin:

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#159

Appears I am in error. Could have sworn the specs site for Surface Headphones said 32 or 33 hour battery life. Site now says 15 hours with active noise cancellation on: Tech Specs

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#160

Samsung Health is all one-integrated app. The disadvantage of Samsung is since Google’s (Android) Wear watch OS has been relatively terrible compared to Apple’s Watch OS, Samsung has gone it alone with its Tizen OS for watches. So, as a result, there are hardly any apps beyond the basics for the watch but if all you want is fitness, e-mail, text, reminders, calendar events, the basics, in other words, it does that well and has been ranked up there with Apple Watch by Consumer Reports. (and my particular S3 watch (but not later Gears), thru MST, can pay at ~90% of existing credit card terminals). The current Gear watch gets 4 to 5 days of battery life but all these things depend on how you run them. Since smartwatches are moving in the direction of being able to operate, place and take calls independently of a phone (like Dick Tracy), it will be interesting to see if someday soon there will be a Made for Brand X Smartwatch hearing aid selling point. You can put music on your smartwatch and stream from there, for example. Maybe, as you say, TJ, the music quality will always be a bit inferior to what you get with a really high-quality headphones or a fully replete speaker system.

Since I like to listen to podcasts, too, how whatever hearing aids I get will work out for podcast listening on sometimes windy walks or walks with helicopters from a nearby medical center zooming overhead is something I’m thinking about-hence the active noise cancellation features of the Surface Headphones if only worn over the HA’s to which I’m streaming… BTW, as far as education goes, the BBC has some excellent programs. Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time podcasts are strongly oriented towards Europe and the United Kingdom in terms of the history and the science series. The British Museum’s History of the World in 100 Objects is great. And so is the BBC’s Short History of Math - covers the lives of 10 famous mathematicians and the importance of the math that they brought to the world. For example, the importance of Euler’s analysis of the Seven Bridges of Königsberg.

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#161

DOS, Windows 3, OS2, but for work. Didn’t have anything at home until an Atari ST. And at work it was mainly minicomputer OSes. But enough about “ancient” history.

How have you found the ReSound Smart 3D app Apple watch connectivity. I have a Series 1 and the ReSound complication works, but seemingly only when the app is connected and open on my iPhone, which sort of defeats the purpose. As soon as I close the iPhone app, I have connection issues on my watch. It’s possible that it’s the older watch and an older iPhone (6S).

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#162

I started out with IBM punch cards and teletype tape, programming in Fortran, then moved on to time-sharing on Bell Lab Unix on PDP machines (forget what number), where the godfather figure who donated us time for free on the machines wanted us all to learn to program in C (I demurred) - my only use was word processing with nroff/troff. A 5 Mb hard disk was as big as a washing machine! I remember in buying my first IBM PC, I wanted it fully loaded with 640K RAM and the University sales person exclaimed, “What!? You’ll never be able to use that much RAM!” We’ve come a long way, baby! Perhaps the processors in HA’s now could beat those early machines? Sorry for the diversion but folks who declare “we have no use for this or that in hearing aids remind me of the guy who said I’d never want more than 640K RAM in a computer ……”

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#163

Been there, done that LOL. Sounds like we’re of that age. Did Fortran at University. Let’s see. I think it was an IBM 360/85 with some sort of 2nd gen front end. That was 1969. A few years later I took a COBOL course and yup, I remember the hard drives that size. Many years later I remember agonizing over whether to spend the extra money to get a 40mb hard drive instead of a 20mb. And I know I’ve got more computing power in my ear than those early machines had.

As for flexibility and options, it’s much better to ignore or turn off if not needed than not to get the best improvement possible. There is no one size fits all.

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#164

I guess one can safely say that if you’re old enough to have programmed in Fortran with punch cards, you’re old enough to probably need hearing aids, since something like 2/3rds of the folks over age 75 need hearing correction. And we belong to that gang (I’m going on 73).

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#165

Fortran and COBOL with punched cards. I’m 70.

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#166

Jim/Bob, I am of the generation that got started with the Vic-20, CoCo, etc. I remember a discussion I had with another Commodore guy on the school bus. We were talking storage space…specifically 20MB. We were both laughing at how long it would take to fill that up. Now I have some 20+ TB of various files on my home NAS systems.

I laugh at ignorant people talking about an iPad or Android tablet not being a real computer. They are … and far more powerful than the ‘real’ computers of 10 years ago.

Yes, most of today’s digital hearing aids are more powerful in pure computational power than many computers of yesteryear.

I started wearing hearing aids in 1st grade…over 40 years ago.

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#167

Hmmm. This is a concern. As someone looking to buy their first HA, I was considering the Resound and buying an Apple watch just to have quick access to HA functionality (well not just that, but it’s finally giving me justification to buy one, even though I’ve wanted one since they came out). I still have a 6S, although am thinking of upgrading to a XR, and would be a Series 4 watch.

#168

No, I have no connection issues at all, neither with the watch or the phone. I use the watch 95% of the time to make any changes to my HAs because it is so handy and convenient to change volume, change programs, fine tune program. I have the ReSound app as a complication on evey watch face that I may use.

I have the Watch 4 with OS 5.0.1 (updated from 5.0 earlier this week) and never an HA connection problem. The phone is an Xs max with OS 12.0 that came that way out of the box. I’ve seen many posts here with connection issues both with phone and watch with various hearing aids, but none have happened to me. I hope this is more than luck and is due to improvements in the phones and software.

As an aside, I like varying posts in a thread and do not consider them off topic. I like both palm trees and oak trees, however I find oaks much more interesting with their convoluted branches.

#169

That’s good to hear. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the older hardware or Bluetooth, although which side, or both, I don’t know. Both are at the latest versions of iOS and watchOS. The watch runs Bluetooth 4.0 and the iPhone 6S 4.2. The iPhone X and up and watch Series 4 are Bluetooth 5.0. I may be in the market for a new phone later this year, but I doubt I’d get a new watch.

I’m not as concerned about the watch as a convenience. And I’ve had no trouble connecting to my iPhone.

I don’t think I’ll branch off into trees.

#170

Nice pun there, well done! :+1:t4: :grin:

Interesting, I had not considered the bluetooth version might affect that too, but it makes sense. I just looked it up and the Xs max and watch 4 are both BT 5.0.

Computers were a later thing in life for me, first at work and then home. I spent my younger years in the mountains as much as possible and spent much time hiking, climbing, skiing, so I worked in mountain shops or construction to get time off when possible. That took me into being a manufacturer rep for mountain and bicycle companies, traveling various western states for years. One reason I still want to be outside in nature as much as possible.

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#171

I bypassed both FORTRAN and punched cards and went straight to Microprocessors and Assembly language. I’m 76.

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#172

@DanTheMan, sorry to get back on topic, sort of, but I notice that you’re audiogram profile is similar to my left ear’s. From your posts I believe you have Costco KS8s. My audiologist at Costco thought that Phonaks or ReSounds would be better for my profile. So I’m wondering how you’re finding the KS8s?

#173

I’m very happy with them. Strangely, the best program for my understanding of speech is the music program. I have programming tools, so I am gradually trying to move the “Automatic “ program to those settings.

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#174

Not so strange. We use wide dynamic range compression to try to squish speech into the reduced dynamic range available in the face of hearing loss thereby increasing audibility, but compressing sound also distorts it. So it’s a bit of a balancing act to determine how much compression is tolerable/beneficial. Severe/profound losses often benefit from more linear gain (likely because of the increased level of distortion already present in the auditory system). Music programs are typically more linear.

#175

So are you should first try to turn off frequency compression in the Automatic program?

#176

I was talking about level compression, not frequency compression. Although frequency compression is certainly another area where you are balancing audibility with distortion.