Hello!
I have Oticon Real 1 and it works well with my Iphone but I wonder if it will work if I buy a ConnectClip to use with the computer when I work and sit a lot in Team meetings?
Don’t want it to be like it is between my Iphone and my Ipad that I need to turn off BT on one device for it to connect to the other. This makes me more or less crazy.
Oticon should have fixed this by the year 2024.
What you are talked about isn’t Oticon’s problem it is just the nature of Bluetooth. I have been an Oticon user for about 14 years and have used the connect clip since it was first introduced. I am also a retired IT professional, the issyou may run into with connect clip use is if you are using it and a notification comes in on the iphone or ipad thatnit will cut into your connect clip use and cause you to miss a part of you conversation. I am a convert from Oticon and iphone to Oticon and Android. I have the Samsung S23 phone that works wonderfully with my Real1 and also the More1 aids. I also have a Samsung Tablet and an iPad, no actual computer anymore. I use the connect or my Bose over the ear with my android tablet and my aids connect directly to the phone and ipad. I also have the Amazon Fire tablet strictly for Kindle books, it does a wonderful job of text to speech. I use either the connect clip or Bose headphones with the Fire tablet. Your best bet is to disable notification toɓ your hearing aids from your iPhone or iPad before using the connect and your computer.
I agree, Oticon should have corrected this by now. Phonak pairs to 8 devices and connects to 2 at one time, plus the TV transmitter. I have three bluetooth devices, cell, tablet, and laptop. So if i want to connect to one when the other two are connected, i do connect on the device and it drops one of the others and connects to the one requested. TV transmitter seems to have a lower priority than bluetooth devices.
Disclaimer: Things don’t always work this smoothly. Sometimes i have to shut down bluetooth on on or more device.
Do Oticon and Signia still use the same device? Not interchangeable but they were obviously the same device.
You are talking apples and oranges. Phonak just classic bluetooth Oticon using MFI and Googles version of MFI which is based on LE bluetooth. And classic bluetooth sucks a lot more battery life than LE. And you must have noticed that to my knowledge only Phonak has used classic bluetooth. I have been around in the technology industry since even before the personal computer and Wireless technology, it has greatly improved but it still has a very long ways to go. What most blame on the hearing aid industry is actually the issue of the way bluetooth is in acted by the different device companies. There are so many possibilities in the way bluetooth can be setup that it is impossible for hearing aid companies to cover all possibilities, battery life would be even worse than it is and the size of the aids would be much more complicated and cost would be even worse than they all ready are. Personal i want to see more development in improving my hearing capabilities without the need for apps, and devices. I know i will never have it again but i would love to use the phone, watch TV, and go to movies and lectures like a normal person. Not needing to be a slave to any device.
I’ve used the ConnectClip on my laptop, which works fine, but if there’s a phone call or if I start playing a video or song on my iPhone, then the iPhone connection takes priority and takes over the connection. But after I stop playing the song or video or phone call on my iPhone, then after maybe 5 seconds, the connection through the ConnectClip on my laptop is automatically resumed without me having to do anything.
But if you’re using the ConnectClip to your laptop and you don’t want to be interrupted by a phone call on your iPhone, then you’d need to turn off the Bluetooth on your iPhone to disconnect it from your HAs for sure. So basically the HAs are connected to the iPhone via MFI (with BT enabled), while is also connected through the ConnectClip to your laptop. The MFI connection to your HAs has priority over the ConnectClip connection to your HAs.
And @cvkemp is right, turning on/off between the iPhone and iPad so that it connects to the device you want is an iOS MFI limitation. There’s really not much Oticon can do about it.
And again, @cvkemp is also right that trying to compare how Oticon does the MFI and ASHA and standard legacy BT to how Phonak does it is to compare apples to oranges. Phonak decided to design the Sword chip to be able keep all their connections in the standard legacy BT land but still managing to avoid burning up their hearing aids’ battery quickly. This simplifies their connection to a single and standard legacy BT protocol that works with everything. So they don’t need to work with MFI and/or ASHA and are not subjected to the limitations of MFI and/or ASHA.
Phonak is the only company that went this route with their Sword chip to enable standard legacy BT connection without significant energy draw from the battery. All other HA mfgs (Oticon included) went the other route, using MFI and ASHA, and intermediary streaming devices for standard BT connection. So it’s not just Oticon, but everybody except Phonak is going to be stuck with the limitations of MFI and ASHA, and require intermediary streaming devices for standard legacy BT.
If simple BT connection is of the highest priority in your search for hearing aids, then Phonak should have been your brand of choice.
Hello!
I don’t agree with you that it’s a Bluetooth problem in general, my airpods don’t have this problem. Neither do any of my other bluetooth devices, it’s only on my Oticon. The question is whether ConnectClip solves the problems or whether I should change hearing aids.
Then you might wonder why it doesn’t develop a function for the app that can connect to other devices. It would solve a lot of problems considering the hardware in the phone and you won’t have to max out extra accessories.
I chose to test Oticon because my audiologist said that these are the devices that work best with the iPhone. They are also the only phones my company uses. But since Covid-19, people almost only use Teams. The number of phone calls in a day may be 0, but Team’s meetings and calls are perhaps 10-15 every day.
Hello!
Yes, it might be like that, I would probably have told the audiologist if I had known this, I live in Sweden and we get our hearing aids from the healthcare system, but if we need accessories, we have to buy them ourselves. I was/am not sufficiently aware of which devices worked well with what. The only question I got was which phone I had and at my job only iPhones are used. I travel a lot and have an Iphone / Ipad and my Dell windows work computer and somehow I want seamless transfer between these devices so that it is smooth. Tried using a headset but it doesn’t work well with the hearing aids.
Air pods are developed by apple for apple devices so yes they work if you are fortunate to have a middle to moderate hearing loss. The issue is that apple hasn’t given the hearing aid companies all of the information about MFi. Apple is holding back important information that could make the experience like the airpods but are because apple has a grand scheme of introducing its own hearing aids. Sure they would be over the counter but at apple’s premium prices. My nephew is a developer with apple so i hear things that probably i should not
It’s not a Bluetooth problem IN GENERAL. It’s a limitation of how the iOS MFI is designed to connect with the hearing aids, therefore it’s a limitation on Apple’s part, not on the hearing aid mfg’s part. Once you pair your hearing aids with the iOS MFI, as long as BT is enabled, the hearing aids are automatically and always connected to that iOS device. BT is only the middle man here, but the real interface is the MFI. THE ONLY WAY to disconnect the hearing aids from that iOS device is to turn OFF the Bluetooth middleman altogether in that device to temporarily sever the link. The other way to permanently sever the link is to Forget the hearing aids pairing with the iOS device altogether. That is why to switch from an iPhone to an iPad (or vice versa), you must turn off the Bluetooth setting (cut off the middleman) to temporarily sever the link connecting the iOS MFI connection to the hearing aids, so that there’s only 1 remaining link to the desired iOS device. Otherwise, if you have multiple links to multiple iOS devices to your hearing aids, the most recent and working link trumps the other subsequent links that were established later.
As to why the AirPods don’t have this problem, it’s because the AirPods are NOT connected via the iOS MFI like the hearing aids are. Instead, they’re connect to the iOS device just like any other standard legacy BT supported devices (Phonak being in this group as well). So that’s why the AirPods or the Phonak or any other devices that supports standard legacy BT shows up on the BT list (but the hearing aids don’t, they only show up on the MFI page). And the standard legacy BT switching mechanism is to select the device (clicking on the “i” on the right side of it) from the BT list of paired (but not connected) devices, then choose to disconnect it (no need to turn off BT like with MFI iOS switching). Once you disconnect the AirPods (or Phonak or another standard BT receiver) from that device, you can now choose to connect it to any other standard BT devices that it’s also paired with. No need to turn ON/OFF BT like with the hearing aids and an iOS MFI, because here, the BT is the interface, the MFI is NOT the interface.
I’m not sure what problem you expect the ConnectClip to solve. It’s not going to solve Apple’s iOS MFI limitation of having to disable BT to sever the link to the hearing aids. But if you’re willing to use the ConnectClip always for EVERYTHING, including your iPhone and iPad, then yes, the ConnectClip is going to remove your hearing aid’s reliance on the MFI interface and therefore the kludgy BT ON/OFF switching between 2 iOS devices. That’s because the hearing aids is now connected through the ConnectClip only and not directly to any iOS device via MFI anymore.
The connect clip when it connects to a device other than the Oticon aids ised standard Bluetooth, and my understanding the connection to the aids is very specific connection that is strictly Oticon. The connect clip will pair to up to 8 devices but as for as i can determine only is connected to one device at a time. And without clearing the pairing and pairing to a different set of aids can only pair to one set of aids. I have been using connect clip since it became available and have used it with laptops, based on windows, MacOS, Linux, and Chrome book, it does its job, but actually reacts somewhat different with different levels of Bluetooth. Right now i use the connect clip with my MacBook, my Samsung Tablet, Kindle reader, and Amazon Fire tablet. It works great battery life is about 6 or 7 hours of streaming audiobooks. Using the connect clips seems to use less of the hearing aid battery life than direct streaming. Since rediscovering my old Bose headphones and gettimg replacement ear pads I prefer using the headphones as that is a less stressful option for the hearing aid batteries. I actually use the headphones over top of my Real1 or More1 aids and can adjust the hearing aids equalizer to improve sound quality. If i happen to listen to music by way of the headphones, i use the MyMusic program of my aids for a much better solution for sound quality.
then how do you explain the fact that my Phonak didn’t make more than 12H while I was connected with Bluetooth to my computer in order to be able to work?
If Phonak didn’t have the power saving enabled by their Sword chip, your Phonak rechargeable hearing aids probably wouldn’t last for more than a few hours when used with regular standard BT, let alone 12 hours.
Take the Apple AirPods Pro 2, the latest and most advanced standard BT enabled ear buds from Apple, I think its single charge listening time is still only 6 hours and talk time of 4.5 hours.
So Phonak lasting for 12 hours while you use it via regular standard BT with your computer is NOT a bad thing thanks to the power saving of the Sword chip, but instead it’s a good thing. Without the Sword chip, it’ll probably last for only a few hours, like most regular standard BT devices that cannot rely on bigger batteries.
Phonak lasting for only 12 hours with regular standard BT connection is only a bad thing compared to other brand of rechargeable HAs lasting 16-24 hours with BT Low Energy. So the Phonak Sword chip helps keep the energy consumption (using standard BT) low enough to last 12 hours, but the Sword chip still cannot help keep the energy consumption low enough to match the energy efficiency of BT LE type of communication devices. Nevertheless, it’s a good “low enough” energy consumption compromise for the trade-off of being able to have universal standard BT connection to just about anything that has BT support.
Well truth be told 4.2 classic is a known power hog regardless, but isn’t this why Phonak went the master/slave set up they’re doing, to try and save power?
I don’t know how much power saving the master/slave setup would help Phonak, but the master/slave setup alone without the development of the SWORD chip wouldn’t help save enough power in the first place.
Below is a link (actually from this Hearing Tracker website) that goes into the details of Phonak’s SWORD chip development. I cut and pasted the Conclusion of this article at the bottom for reference in case some folks would rather just go for the summary in the end.
From same URL you posted above:
Can’t be real, I only used Bluetooth for a few hours (not continuously), some skype meetings and my Phonak Life died after 12H 
…
The fact that Phonak rechargeable battery hearing aids can’t deliver the charge long enough to last many folks for a whole day as advertised is well know and has generated a lot of complaints on this forum. But it doesn’t take anything away from the fact that without the decision to develop and deploy the SWORD chip, Phonak wouldn’t have been able to position themselves in a more advantageous position compared to all other HA mfgs who opted not to develop their equivalent of the Phonak SWORD chip in order to be compatible with BT Classic devices and not burn up their batteries within just a few hours.
So maybe while the SWORD chip helps eliminate the power hog situation when interfacing with classic BT, it’s still not as energy efficient as interfacing with BT LE as to allow their rechargeable system to last more than a full 16 or 20 hour day, while other brands’ rechargeable system has no problem lasting that long. But it could simply be an inferior rechargeable battery design issue and the SWORD chip is not to blame. We just don’t know.
One needs to look at the performance of the disposable battery version to judge how energy efficient the SWORD chip is, because then you can eliminate the performance factor of the rechargeable battery. I think the Phonak Lumity no longer offers a disposable battery version, but I think the Paradise and the Marvel do. So if you take the disposable battery version of either the Marvel or Pardise, how long do the batteries last on them if streamed frequently? About 4 days? I know my Oticon OPN 1 lasts about 4 days on disposable batteries when frequently streamed. If that’s the case, then the problem is not that the SWORD chip is not energy efficient enough to be on par with the other brands without the equivalent SWORD chip. The problem is that the Phonak rechargeable battery system just sucks and underperforms compared to other brands’ rechargeable hearing aid system.
