Phonak L90s Do Not Maintain State?

Hearing Aids
#1

I am thinking I must be missing something because this is so basic.

In my world, a device or application should:

  • Maintain it’s state moment-to-moment until the user
    initiates a change.

  • When opened or turned on, re-establish the state that
    it was in when last closed.

But my L90s are constantly reverting to Microphoned-On while in use and do not remember that Microphones were set to Off when they are re-booted.

My audiologist has implemented a few workaroinds that partially mitigate the problem, but the basic problem remains.

Bottom Line: What am I missing? Why can’t Phonak implement such a basic element of good application design in such an expensive appliance?

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#2

They go back to the default config each time they reboot. Normally autosense and mid-level mic gain.

WH

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#3

Are they switching to mics on while in use? Or just when rebooted? Those are two different problems.

If you have it set up to stream calls and audio from your phone via bluetooth, it will reactivate the mics every time it receives an audio signal from the phone. You’ll have to manually deactivate the mics again each time. Fortunately, you can set it up so that this is easily done.

For rebooting, the default is that it starts up in Autosense. This can be changed to a different program in Target (the programming software your audi uses.) I don’t remember offhand whether it’s possible to mute the mics as part of a new program’s settings, but it’s something to ask about. But even if that’s possible, it will reboot with mics off every single time, not just when it shut down with them off.

#4

Both.

The Audi gave me a hard button to long-press to turn off mics and that mitigates it somewhat.

But the basic design failures are still there.

What I was trolling for was some reason that I had not thought of… But it starting to sound like just substandard design and implementation.

#5

I think it’s generally expected that people who use hearing aids want the mics activated most of the time, and that they wouldn’t be taking them out of the case, turning them on, and putting them in their ears if they didn’t want the mics activated at that moment. I’m not judging, because a lot of what I use mine for is pretty non-standard, too. But I’m struggling to imagine a use case where someone would want to take them out of the case and insert them into their ears with the mics off, and intend for them to remain off.

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#6

Easy:

  • User seldom interacts with people.

  • User is sufficiently hearing-impaired that they
    cannot watch TV or movies without subtitles
    or hearing aids - and the hearing aids are served
    by a streaming device connected to the TV.

  • User watches a lot of TV.

  • User gets around on a kind of bicycle and wind noise,
    helmet movement, and such generate enough noise
    that situational awareness is better with microphones
    off.

But, however bizarre a use case may be, once the user adjusts settings to accomodate that case, the rules of good application design dictate that applications should remember those settings and restore them at the time of next use.

Less verbosely, the data behind settings should be non- volitile.

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#7

Going back to default settings is better for technically less adept users, who are probably the majority. If the aids get into an unsatisfactory state by fumbling with buttons or smartphone or accessory or whatever, they can be restored to a usable state by cycling the battery door or, I assume, by power-cycling rechargeable aids.

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#8

That makes perfect sense - and confirms my suspicion that I was missing something.

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