I think you’re totally missing the point of why Oticon aids don’t even need something like Phonak’s AutoSense in the first place. That’s because you just simply don’t understand the Oticon approach to program change like many people don’t → and the approach is that there is really no need to change programs with Oticon aids most of the times in the first place.
Starting with the OPN model already, the Oticon aids is designed so that the user only needs to be in the General program, and if the environment changes, the Oticon aids will just adjust the noise reduction level to match with the change in the environment, all in the same General program.
Phonak’s AutoSense feature, prior to the Lumity model, detects a change in the environment and automatically changes from its default program to another program (like a Speech in Noise program, for example), so that the noise reduction parameters as set in that Speech in Noise program can take effect.
So you see the difference now? Oticon aids stays in General and changes noise reduction parameters to match the environment (not changing programs). Phonak aids instead changes programs to match the environment. Two different approaches to solve the same issue → need more noise reduction when the environment gets more difficult.
While you indicated that you’re happy with AutoSense, I’ve heard from many others on threads in this forum who don’t like to see AutoSense hunting back and forth between programs too often too much.
What does Phonak do now with their latest Lumity model??? They now design the Lumity to sense the environment and adjust noise reduction parameters in the General program without switching over to another program (like Speech in Noise). Oh, wait a minute, Oticon has already done this right from the get go with their OPN model, all the way through the Intent now. And Phonak is just beginning to do that same thing with their latest Lumity???
To provide a little bit of history for context → originally with the OPN, Oticon did not provide any other built-in program. That was because the intent (not the new model name, just the word intent) was that just the 1 General program was enough to deal with all environments, because noise reduction values can be automatically adjusted in the General program as the environment changes. Nevertheless, Oticon still made available up to 4 programs total, just in case the users want some kind of customization for the other 3 programs. However, users (like you) still didn’t understand this new nuance, which Oticon HCPs didn’t do a good job explaining to their patients, so Oticon got criticized heavily for not offering any built-in programs at all. In fact, the lack of understanding about this got so bad that people began to have a bad perception of Oticon aids being inferior to other brands. So a year later, Oticon finally succumbed to the pressure and started making built-in programs available to the public.
Many Oticon users will tell you that they use the General program 95% of the time, even in noisy places. Oticon users who manually switch between the General program and other built-in programs made available by Oticon (like Speech in Noise) simply do it because they don’t understand the new use model of the Oticon General program, and thought that they had to do it the conventional way.