While I understand this, as someone that has worked almost every phase of high tech manufacturing, I will say this for that to happen get ready for way larger devices. No more small in the ear AirPods. No more truly wireless charging. We would be set back to wear the devices around our necks are worse.
Sorry to butt in… I’ve been searching for an answer on how one dehumidifies your rechargeable hearing aids overnight if they are on the charger? Particularly RITC.
I place my aids in a dryer/dehumidifier for between a half hour to hour depending on the need in the evening then on the charger after a cool down. While with the Oticon OPNS/More aids this may seem like an issue due to the charger I have made it a habit so it just comes natural.
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Hi - I Have a phonak charger which has a place for a silica gel capsule - No clue whether it is effective or not as I have not had moisture problems yet. Since the rechargeable HAs are sealed much better than those with batteries they should resist moisture much better (they will also be more difficult to dry out if moisture does get in though!)
Other solutions are like these links below where you put the whole recharging unit inside a drier overnight . No idea whether this works well or not… but it avoids having to do what @cvkemp does as two separate operations.
DryBoost UV by Dry & Store | Maintenance System for Your Rechargeable Hearing Aids or Amplifiers - The Perfect
Flow Med Dry-Cap UV2 Electronic Hearing Aid Dryer for Rechargeable Aids
So true if the Phonak aids work for you. They don’t sound good to me .
Thanks for that and sorry to hijack the thread. My OPN 1’s died on me after having a snow diverted flight and didn’t get to a hotel till 30 some hours+ later. They died at the hotel believe it or not, I then put new batteries in…dead. Dried them overnight and they worked in the morning. Don’t know what caused it…dampness in the receiver, the HA body or battery door.
Still debating which way recharge or throw away on my next HA’s.
Thanks for the links but on the go may a problem.
Didn’t see whether anyone discussed leaving the charger always charging further down in the thread but just wanted to comment that perhaps it’s not a good idea. For my own ReSound charging case, I keep it between 33% and ~70% charged based on the indicator LED lights on the case. It’s supposed to be deleterious to the long-term lifespan of a Li-ion battery to keep it stored at 100% charged. The battery pack, whenever needed, should have the reserve to recharge your charger as needed even if the electricity is out for a few days (as noted in another thread, I think my 25,000 mAh battery pack even if only kept at 50% charged has enough juice to keep my charging case charged for 5 weeks of HA use). Seems like manufacturers of Li-ion battery-powered devices could help us all out by building battery management systems into their devices so that if we wanted we could pick an upper charging limit for any battery-powered device as well as get low-power need-to-recharge notifications from the device, too. If Apple can make a $29 BT-based AirTag (and still probably make a handsome profit) with a low-battery notification built-in, I’m sure the rest of the world could do something similar if users would expect and demand it.
The charger is connected to the battery, but it doesn’t charge anything unless the HAs are in their slots. It has no built-in batteries of its own.
It’s made to be plugged into the wall all the time, so what would it matter if it’s plugged into the battery? Nothing is working unless there are HAs charging.
Thanks for the heads up, anyway.
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The Oticon situation may be different but my ReSound Quattro charger will charge whether the HA’s are in the slots or not. I can charge it all the way up to 100% whether or not the HA’s are inserted in the charging slots. The ReSound charger has two sets of LED charging lights. There are 4 LED’s in a row on the top front edge of the charger base that when HA’s are first inserted or first removed indicate the relative charge percentage in 25% increments for the HA’s. Then in the back lower center, there are three LED’s that indicate the charge level of the case itself. The HA smartphone app only indicates the charge level of the HA’s and my ReSound app will show the charge level of each HA separately whereas the indicators on the front of the case only show the level of the HA with the lowest charge.
For ReSound, the case charge level indicators on the back light also light when the HA’s are inserted or removed into the charger. They also light whenever a charging cord is first inserted or removed from the back of the case.
Just mentioning the details for ReSound here in the event that the Oticon charging case also has separate indicators for HA’s and case, too. If so, you should be able see whether your Oticon case will charge without the HA’s inserted into the case.
Although the batteries involved with case and HA’s are very small and very little heat is involved, for Li-ion battery-powered devices, I tend to charge them when I’m not using them, e.g., charge the case when I’m not charging my HA’s. For bigger devices, like a tablet or laptop, charging a device while using the device intensively just adds to the heat load that the battery is under, i.e., both charging and discharging build up heat within the battery and doing both intensively “doubles” the heat. If one really needs to use a device, one can have no choice but when I don’t have to do both at the same time, I avoid it (the instructions for my DJI Mavic 2 Pro drone say to let any battery cool for 30 minutes after use before charging it again, the batteries for my EGO string trimmer and my leaf blower have fans built in to air-cool the battery in use and while charging!).
Maybe the other thing that I don’t understand is that there is no battery in the Oticon case itself? (or perhaps if there is, Oticon is smart enough to have a Battery Management System already built in?).
I overlooked your previous comment:
There isn’t a battery in the charger. And if the power is removed while the aids are in the charger they power on and start discharging.
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It’s a very simple device, which is okay for a base unit. But I wish that Oticon did make a compact travel charger with rechargeable batteries into it like Phonak’s.
(I don’t know whether ReSound make such a getup - never needed to look it up.)
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I keep hearing that Oticon is working on a battery pack like the others but don’t understand what is so complicated that it has taken this long. I was told of a coming travel charger almost a year ago.
I dunno, either, Chuck. I like their core product - it meets my needs, but their peripherals (eg. app, ConnectClip, charger options) are underwhelming.
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I have to agree the exact devices and the ON app is lack luster at best, seems to be after thoughts. But I don’t prefer Oticon for the extras, but for the aids and what they do for my hearing needs. I would be very happy if I never needed more than the aids with good custom ear molds.
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I see little value in a self-powered (via battery) charger for hearing aids, a la Airpods charging case, because the use model for charging hearing aids is not the same use model of charging Airpods type units anyway. With the Airpods, you don’t wear them all day, only at different times during the day, so there’s a need to store them on the go, and an opportunity to charge them in between and while on the go in your pocket because the Airpods don’t last all day, but only a few hours at a time.
Hearing aids on the other hand are designed to last all day long, so the only time their charger need to be used is at night while you sleep. So a self-powered charger is unnecessary. I would even argue that it’s undesired in my personal opinion, because then I’d have to worry about not keeping that self-powered charger at 100% state of charge all the times to help with battery longevity, like @jim_lewis does with his ReSound Quattro charger, even when I’m at home and it’s sitting on my nightstand for the most part of time.
Why introduce another reliability worry that I don’t really need, for what? Just so I don’t need to have or carry a 5V power source for it? But 5V power sources now-a-days are ubiquitous anyway. You’d almost always have to bring a 5V power source with you when you travel already for your other stuff like cell phones and ConnectClip, etc.
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I do for trips, and camping. And of course wth more and more areas having power outages.
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@Volusiano: You’re right, of course. I think it’s the survivalist/troubleshooter/child-at-a-distance-from-aging-parents mode creeping in here. @cvkemp’s “Go Bag” solution is the most practical and elegant solution.
I’m just remembering “getting the call”, either from work or from my parents when I didn’t have a bag packed … I think there are personal reasons that took my mindset back to those days, today.
Anyway, I retract my desire for an Oticon mini travel charger, but I’ll let stand my comments about the ConnectClip and app. I love the functionality of the ConnectClip, but the battery replacement issue is a bummer.
[@cvkemp: this is the part that changed my mind. I’d throw an extra charger and a large-capacity brick into my drag bag instead, Chuck.]