Heare’s a link to enable heaing aids on your samsung. Link.
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Thank you. However, I’ve already tried this and it still doesn’t work. I appreciate you taking the time to offer this idea though.
Sorry, I don’t have a samsung, but perhaps @cvkemp can help you out, as he has a s23 & oticons, which are similar.
Chuck!! RU Here??
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I have the Samsung S23 with the very latest firmware update. I wear the Oticon Real1 and my backup aids are the More1 aids, both sets work wonderfully with the phone. No i do not have full hands free but all of my calls go to my aids as do music, audiobooks and all of my notifications.
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Here is another video on the HearLink 9050 produced by an audiologist/or HAS who works for Costco. Very interesting.
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It’s very typical for Costco HIS (and this guy before) to love to claim that the Philips 9040 is the “equivalent” of the Oticon Real 1, as this same guy now also claims that the Philips 9050 is the equivalent of the Oticon Intent 1. The truth is that the Oticon core technology and the Philips core technology are not the same, as least not “same” enough to be claimed “equivalent”. Only the peripheral technologies are the same.
Just for that alone, it makes his whole video not credible anymore.
Oticon is selling the Intent 1 in the US close to $8K a pair, compared to the Philips aids from Costco at $1500 a pair. So if what these Costco HIS say is true, that they’re basically the same aids, then nobody in their right mind would want to buy the Intent 1 in the US but instead would flock to Costco for the 9050 when it comes out. So are we saying that Oticon is so stupid to do this as to allow the Philips aid to cannibalize sale of their Oticon Intent aids?
At the 2 minute mark into the video, he said that the fitting software is the same, just different colors. I have used the Oticon Genie 2 software for many years, and I have also downloaded and played around with the Philips 9040/9050 software in simulation, and I can tell you that they are NOT the same, just with different colors. Their look and feel are entirely different. But not just their look and feel, but the actual parameters for their core technologies are entirely different as well, only the parameters for their peripheral technologies are the same.
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Let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that they are almost identical as claimed: then what if Demant also managed to successfully sow the seeds of doubt just enough to not actually result in cannibalisation. Marketing and spec sheets could make it difficult to compare directly, private audiologists would back this up with their clients, and people on hearing aid forums may even argue these points amongst themselves… further creating doubt for the typical new-to-HA person just doing some initial research.
Job done - now they would have less R&D spend across their brands, a wider market share (including from the high numbers they sell at low margin via Costco), and so maximum profit overall!
One could say that with the latest generation they are so confident in this approach that they aren’t even bothering any more to make the outer shell of the Oticons look different to the rest. Again, saving on R&D and manufacturing costs.
At the end of the day the bottom line matters the most to a company, and clearly they have enough evidence by now to know how much of a risk self-cannibalisation would be. Oticon is still their top profit-making brand by far and that doesn’t appear to be at risk even with this speculation out there.
How would you know how different they were without actual testing them?
Also I know for a fact that other companies sell the exact same products under generic of other names for a lot less then they sell under name brands.
Costco is a big seller of Hearing aids to people that wouldn’t buy the name brand ones because of cost.
I’ve read that the Kirkland 9 and 10 were actually Phonak. And the Kirkland sold for a lot less than the Phonak so why would it be a stretch to believe the Phillips could be doing the same?
Lastly I would ask just how much does the Oticon audiologist actually pay for them and what’s the mark-up?
I base my conclusion that the core technologies between these 2 aids are different based on reading the whitepapers from Oticon and from Philips aids that describe their core technologies extensively. Also by studying the 2 fitting programs extensively to review how similar and different they are.
I believe that by doing whitepaper comparison, it is more objective than based on actual subjective testing by wearing them because actual wear tests can be subjected to many different factors and environments. For example, if you’re in a quiet environment, not just Philips against Oticon, but probably ALL brands’ aids will perform adequately the same. In noisy environments, they may start to perform differently, but unless it’s an exact scientific test with A/B comparisons right on the spots, it can also be very subjective.
If you care to read the whitepapers, you will find that Oticon describes their core technology, the AI based on DNN (deep neural network), as being trained by using 4 million different sound scenes, with the focus being on balancing the different sound components broken down and rebuilt in a recreated sound scene. The Philips paper describes their AI core technology as being trained by using hundreds of thousands of noisy speech samples (not 4 million complete sound scenes like with Oticon) to remove the noise from these hundreds of thousands of speech samples. It becomes very obvious that their core technologies, while both being AI based, are focused on very different approaches and strategic implementation.
Yes, the KS9 and KS10 are rebrands of the Phonak Marvel and Paradise. But that doesn’t automatically imply that the Philips aids are rebrands of Oticon aids. Just like Sonova owing Phonak and Unitron and Hansaton, William Demant owns Oticon and Bernafon and Sonic. William Demand doesn’t own Philips, they only license hearing aid technologies to Philips. So while Phonak did rebrand their Marvel and Paradise as KS9 and KS10, the Bernafon and Philip aids have been sold at Costco not as rebrands, but as their own brand. So we only say KS9 and KS10 are rebranded Phonak aids because the Kirland Signature brand doesn’t actually produce hearing aids per se. But we don’t say that Phonak aids are rebrands of Unitron aids, or vice versa, just like we don’t say Philips aids are rebrands of Oticon aids, because they’re their own brands.
Another telltale sign that the KS9 and KS10 are actual rebrands of Phonak Marvel and Paradise is that you can use the one and only and the same Target fitting software used by Phonak to program the KS9 and KS10 aids, just like you would use it for the Marvel and Paradise. However, you cannot use the Oticon Genie 2 software to program Philips 9030, 9040 and 9050 aids. Philips have their HearSuite software for the 9030, 9040 and 9050, which cannot be used to program Oticon OPN,S, More, Real, Intent aids. On top of that, the interface between the Genie 2 and the HearSuite software are very different. Definitely not the same with different colors on it like the guy on the YouTube video purports it to be.
But hey, nobody can stop anybody to want to believe that the Philips aids are the same as the Oticon aids. If you want to believe it, then by all means please do so, if it makes you feel better for deciding to purchase the Philips aids.
I personally think that the Philips aids are a much better value aids than the Oticon aids, simply based on the pricing difference. If I had to pay with my own money, I would buy the Philips aids over the Oticon aids in a heart beat myself. But I won’t be fooled into believing anybody telling me that I’m getting the exact same aids for much less money. I’ll tell myself that I’m getting a very competent and high quality set of aids for much less money.
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You seem to have a very little idea how sales and marketing works.
This is happens ALL THE TIME, and it’s done to reach multiple markets and levels of spending capabilities, because it brings way more money than just limiting it to the upper tiers.
Costco also sells Jabra and Rexton devices which are the EXACT equivalents of Resound and Signia, down to software level.
By that, I’m not saying that Philips are the exact equivalents of Oticons, because they aren’t. Hardware wise they’re EXACTLY the same, and were certified as such.
Software wise they are not, but is the difference worth 6,5k $ ? I highly doubt.
He said that in general, about ALL fitting software, and to a degree that’s true. They share a lot, just differently named and with different colors.
It seems like your point here is that William Demant or Oticon’s aim is less R&D spend but still be able to proliferate their products and capture both the high end (expensive) market and the low end market (for affordable aids).
I say that it’s a good point, but I contend that William Demant or Oticon doesn’t have to play any marketing trick to fool anybody like you think in order to minimize on R&D expense, yet maximize in capturing all market levels. I think that in the process of arriving at the DNN AI that they decided to use for their Oticon brand, they must have already invested in enough R&D activities to have developed several different tangential but viable AI engines for themselves, with the Philips AI focused on noise reduction on noisy speech samples being one of those fruits of their labor. The whitepaper on the Oticon DNN even said that they have developed several different DNN models, and narrowed in on the best model to use for their final products.
So it wouldn’t be a surprise for William Demant to say “Hey, since Oticon has ended up developing a couple of very good AI technologies to go to market with there, why leave one to waste? Instead, why not use the best one for the Oticon lineup, and take the other one and license it to the Philips line up? That way, we also get to sell through Costco at a much reduced price to capture the low end affordable market as well?”
Also, just making sure that you’re aware of the fact, that Philips Hearlink devices aren’t owned nor developed by the Philips, but by Demant, which just licenses the name and rebadges their own stuff.
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It doesn’t even have to be a rebrand like you said. Even the Oticon Intent line up now has 4 different tier levels within itself. Their OPN and More and Real only have 3 tier levels. Almost all other aids have multi tier levels as well. This is very common knowledge to everyone, the rebrands and the upper tiers and the lower tiers. So no need to educate me on this, of course.
Everyone is their own judge of whether the $6.5K worth of software difference is justifiable or not. Your set of value is different than somebody else’s set of value. You can highly doubt the price difference for yourself, but you shouldn’t highly doubt the price difference on behalf of others.
Just because it’s a software difference doesn’t make it of less value than a hardware difference. Similar to whether a Tesla with a $12K worth of Full Self Driving software difference is of value to one person over another or not, that’s also a personal judgement. There’s a reason why that “software difference” was being sold at $12K. It has gone down to $8K now, but it was $6K before that, then $8K, then $12K, now back to $8K.
But it’s good to see that you’ve admitted that the Philips and the Oticon aids are NOT EXACTLY equivalent. That’s the ONLY thing I’m arguing here, the Costco HIS’s like to tell their customers that they’re exactly the same but they’re not. The fact that their hardware may be the same but their software is different doesn’t make them exactly the same like they claim.
In the end, remember that we’re not debating the values between the 2 brands here. We’re only debating the accuracy of the Costco HIS’ claim that they’re exactly the same, which is not true.
The tiers and pricing of hearing devices are hugely arbitrary, the margins are insane, and have very little to do with recouping R&D expenses nowadays. [or the real value of the device]
If you think that those practices [of arbitrary set software tiers] are normal and ethical I feel sorry for your pocket.
I remember one recent massive controversy with a cars manufacturer, where they tried to tie seat heating to a subscription model [meaning; if you don’t pay monthly for ‘premium’ features, then no seat heating for you]
And you can bet that hearing devices manufacturers would love to try something like that too. Management and marketing people in corpos are straight evil. and normalization of their practices plus uncritical gulping what they peddle, really really scares me.
Of course that is possible, and I can’t disprove your theory. But what I can say with certainty is that how each individual brand spin their own whitepaper on the internal tech is only at the cost of a short-term technical writer’s salary (perhaps just one or two such people per brand). Why then would you add additional work on top of that (including testing, which is not insignificant), when in reality very few people - if any - are going to extensively test the AI capabilities in Oticon & Bernafon/Philips aids side-by-side and come to a certain conclusion about the differences? Simply tellling people that they are different would suffice, and nobody outside of the Demant group could ever independently check the internals to verify either way.
Just to be clear on my own view: I wouldn’t ever say that same-gen “equivalent” Oticon and Philips aids are exactly the same with no differentiators as I know that at the very least the proprietary rationales offered are different and so are some aspects of the fitting software; but that’s a historical thing and I don’t think they would even do that again going forward if they made any changes in those areas. Why do I think that? Well, compare the physical appearance of each Demant brand’s latest-gen devices for example: they are more alike than ever now, if not identical. So it would appear there’s a trend of ever more convergence happening over time, and it makes perfect sense if past convergent strategies have not hurt their bottom-line.
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They’re just capitalists. Of course, many people believe capitalism is evil.
I find this whole discussion interesting. I always considered that the real difference between buying a $1500 Costco set of hearing aids compared to the $8000 pair was in the fitting. I would think that either of the products would be adequate for most people, if the fitting were done properly. But, I’ve been wrong before.
In this discussion about the difference in the hardware and the software, don’t discount the software differences. I have spent the last 40 years servicing medical equipment. When I first started hardware determined how a piece equipment functioned. But as the years progressed, the hardware became the same across platforms and the software determines how the hardware operates. The magic happens in the software nowadays. The hardware allows the software to become more sophisticated but the software drives the functionality
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@Baltazard Yeah, the posting of this video last night (#105) seems to have re-ignited the discussion
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From what I’ve read Costco has always sold some of the highest quality in their hearing aids.
They have a huge pricing advantage over your local audiologist as they can sell way more units. They are also selling to people who won’t buy the higher priced ones so the parent company is still making more money. That’s their goal. Make money
Maybe it would be better to just wait and see exactly how the intent and 9050 head to head in real world conditions.
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