Resound Omnia 9 battery problem

Hearing Aids Manufacturer Support
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#1

my wife is about to turn in her fourth set of Resound Omnia 9’s because of a battery defect? two of the defective units rechargeable and two used batteries. There were two different audiologist involved.

She’s a long time Hearing Aid, user and believes her usage pattern has not changed, iPhones for telephone calls, some streaming using a Multimic as a TV adapter and an occasional zoom session.

With both types of aids, the hearing aids work for a period of time and die with no warning of low battery.

in the case of a replaceable batteries, she is able to open the door count to 10 and close the door and the hearing aids begin working typically for another day or so.

When the problem occurs the app does not show the hearing aid present.

It happens alternately with both ears, but much more frequently with the right ear.

in the hope that this is an omnia problem, the audiologist has gotten her a Resound one model nine.

She has tried it both with and without M&IRE.

calls to Resoind have resulted in them telling her this is never happened anyone else.

Has anyone else seen this?

#2

When you say “die,” are you just talking about connectivity to the Smart 3D app, or do the hearing aids actually pick up no sound? (my test is to rub my thumb against my fingernails near the mics, and I hear a sshhhing sound if my HA’s are on). I had a trial set of Omnia rechargeables for almost 3 weeks, and I have been wearing Omnia 962s, which take a size 13 zinc-air battery, for almost 2 months now. I’ve had no problem with either dying unexpectedly. I get 10 to 12 days runtime out of the size 13 battery. I easily got a full day out of the rechargeable. Each time the replaceable battery has gotten low, I’ve gotten the ding-ding-dong warning in my ear, and a notice that the battery is low has appeared in the Smart 3D app.

Is your wife doing anything like drying the HA’s in a hot HA dryer? Maybe that’s malfunctioned and is cooking them? If your wife’s a veteran user, she’s probably let the zinc-air batteries sit for at least 2 minutes after pulling the tabs on them. ReSound, on its OEM replaceable batteries, recommends users let them sit 10 minutes exposed to air before putting in the HA’s (my audi told me 2 min would be fine, but it’s easy for me to wait 10 min). I avoid touching the battery surface with the air vents to avoid getting finger grease, etc., into the vents.

#3

i’ve had my omnia rechargeables for a few months and never experienced a battery problem… i wear them 15 to 16 hrs a day streaming TV about 6 hrs and still have never had below 20%

#4

There were different symptoms.

In all cases, the HA that ailed (one failed at a time) became “upairded” from the APP. With the battery units, the HA continued to function about 1/2 the time - with no connection if she was on the phone. If she was using the HA standalone, the sound seemed to “change texture” (according to her) and go to the default (all around) program.

There is no easy way to restart the rechargeable hearing aids, although it is possible.

With the battery units, she discovered that if she opened the battery door, waited, and closed the door, the HA returned to normal including re-pairing with the app. It then lasted the remaining estimated time for the battery - typically more than a day.

We don’t think the battery or charger was at fault with the rechargeable units. Once the problem started, she began examining the app during they to note the battery level. It was always at full after an overnight charge and typically declined to nearly full when examined as the day went on. Clearly, she could not examine the level at the instant before the failure.

She, in one case, experienced the first failure, of a rechargeable, on the ride home from the Audiologist after the first week adjustment.

She does not use a HA dryer but stores the battery units in the Resound-provided case overnight.

She has many years experience with non-rechargeable zinc/air batteries and has been instructed to allow them to sit a bit after removing the seal. I don’t know the exact time, but I don’t believe it is critical after the batteries have been in successful operation for an hour or more.

She has been trained to wash and dry her hands before changing batteries and avoid touching the air vent, so it doesn’t clog. After a period of correct operation, it is likely the air vent is not the problem.

She typically gets 2 days or more out of the non-rechargeables. The rechargeables were nearly depleted each day before going back on charge. I discussed the rapid discharge issue with a Resound tech support person and was told the 30 hour estimate of battery life was measured in a non-streaming mode. Since she uses her iPhone for calls, occasional Zoom meetings, and some TV, Resound suggested a mid-day recharge during, for example, a nap. She never got to try this.

The problem occurred at least once after the audiologist removed M&IRE.

She picks up her Resound One 9 with M&IRE today. Hopefully the battery problem is a manufacturing defect on the Omnia and the older One’s will work as advertised.

#5

Holding the power button on an Omnia rechargeable until the green LED light blinks three times will shut that HA down. You can then hold the power button down until the HA comes on again and reboots (green LED lights). It takes less than a minute to do this. Inserting an HA into the rechargeable case and removing it will also reboot the HA. (works for Ones and Quattros, too - and with a little practice, you can reboot by holding down the button while still wearing the HA’s).

I have experienced a connectivity issue with the Smart 3D app that I’ve associated (rightly or wrongly) with upgrading my iPhone to iOS 16.3.1. Rebooting my iPhone usually fixes that connectivity issue, and if not, rebooting the affected HA will. AFAICD, the connectivity issue does not affect battery runtime. The most recent Smart 3D app update seems to have largely fixed the occasional loss of connectivity to my iPhone and any BT connectivity problems walking by the house that seems to emanate a lot of EMI in my neighborhood. iOS 16.3.1 and Connectivity Issues - #40 by jim_lewis.

If you check out the ReSound literature, you can stream constantly with the Ones and the Omnias, and at most, the 30-hour runtime will be reduced to 25 hours or so. (The Omnias are supposed to have even less reduction in runtime than the Ones).

My audi has fit a number of patients with ReSound One or ReSound Omnia HA’s and has mentioned no problems with reliability. I had previously complained to her about my perceived reliability of my ReSound Quattros. I suffered a number of external mic failures for my left HA (I was cleaning the microphone openings with a Jodi-Vac, which I’ve stopped doing). So I think she would have told me if she’s had a problem with either the Ones or the Omnias. In fact, she said the only difference her patients had consistently reported to her between ReSound HA’s and Phonak HA’s is less hair rubbing sound against the external mics with Phonak HA’s.

Oticon Real 1 - my experience
#6

My wife is on her second day of her fifth (5!!!) set of Resound hearing aids. 4 Omnia (2 rechargeable), and the current one is a Resound One 9 with M&IRE. It failed about 1:00 today after a full charge last night.

As before, when she waited and powered it back on, the aid started and is running fine after several hours.

Is there anything to suspect that she is causing the issue - on the battery aids, they were brand new batteries that were installed fresh. The rechargeables showed a full charge after morning power on.

In every case, there was significant feedback around the time of failure and the app lost connectivity.

#7

Perhaps if you had another iPhone, you could pair your wife’s HA’s with that and see if the same problem still occurs with that iPhone. I think if ReSound had a general quality control problem with the Ones or the Omnias, the forum here would be lit up with complaints from those who’d tried them, especially since the failures your wife has experienced have come after very little use of the HA’s.

I’m still unsure from your descriptions whether “failure” is just disconnection from the smartphone app or lack of any sound from the HA’s in your wife’s ears. And when an HA fails in a set of hearing aids, is it always the same one or sometimes one, sometimes the other, or both at the same time?

Another context question is where do the failures occur? If they always occur in a certain room in your home, for example, maybe you have a device in that room that’s gone bonkers with generating EMI: Hearing Aids and EMI (Electromagnetic Interference) | DEAF-INFO

Edit_Update: A somewhat more up-to-date article on the potential for EMI affecting HA’s. This article is from 2011. The previous one I cited was last updated around 2005 and seemed to apply mostly to analog HA’s! Perhaps digital designs have improved since 2011, but I still get EMI affecting BT/MFi transmission while out walking near certain houses. I always imagine it would be worse inside the house! Digital Wireless Hearing Aids, Part 4: Interference | The Hearing Review

#8

Jim,

Thank you for the idea about another iPhone. I have suggested three things to my wife:

  1. Turn off bluetooth on her iPhone for a few days - inconvenient, but possibly a lead to the issue. Very glad you mentined it.

  2. She record the reported battery level in the morning, at noon, and at charge begin at night. Last night there were 2 of 5 bars left on both aids - she had them on from 4 a.m. until about 10 p.m. - a long day with sufficient battery life to work - although one failed mid-day.

  3. As you say, thousands of Ones and Omnias are in use. If there were a manufacturing problem, hundreds of people have reported it.

Normally the failure is a complete shutdown of the HA with no sound being emitted. Once, just the iPhone link failed - but she is not sure.

Thanks to this net, she has “discovered” that a long press of the button turns the failing aid back on - and in a few minutes it automatically re-pairs with her iPhone.

#9

Last night I had an issue similar to your wife’s. I had repeatedly been turning my HA external mics off and on to avoid feedback as I donned and removed ear muffs to protect the HA’s from water as I went outside to check sprinkler function at the various stations that come on over time in our yard.

One HA failed to come on and was disconnected from the Smart 3D app. Earlier in this thread, I mentioned a thread I had started about occasionally losing connectivity to my Omnias that I attributed to the iOS 16.3.1 upgrade: iOS 16.3.1 and Connectivity Issues. In this instance, last night, rebooting the phone did not reconnect my Omnia. I had to reboot the HA. The issues I described in starting that thread have happened to me about once a day, and I only noticed them since getting iOS 16.3.1 in mid-February.

I noticed in the iOS MFi accessibility settings (Settings, Accessibility, Hearing Devices, MFi Hearing Devices at the top of the screen), there is the option to control the HAs independently or not. Changing this option to controlling both together in the iOS accessibility settings doesn’t seem to affect whether or not both HA’s are controlled together or separately in the Smart 3D app. But I’m wondering if things work out better if both HA’s are set to be controlled together in the basic iOS settings. Maybe my “iOS 16.3.1” issues are related to what’s going on with your wife’s HA’s, and it’s not a battery issue but some HA connected/not connected, HA mics on/off issue related to electronic circuits and their software/firmware control, not the batteries. My “creative” thought is that if my iPhone is talking to both HA’s separately, it’s easier for one of the MFi connections to go astray. So I’ve set both HA’s to be controlled together as MFi devices and will see if that affects my “iOS 16.3.1 connectivity issues.”

If your wife swipes down from the top of her screen on the right, she should see the iOS widgets. If one taps on the ear symbol (I forget if anything is necessary to make it appear), she’ll get direct access to the MFi HA controls. Triple-clicking on the right side button also brings up those controls. In the future, I’m going to see what the MFi settings have to say about connectivity vs. the Smart 3D app. Down at the bottom of the iOS MFi HA settings screen (you might have to scroll), there is a MIC on/off radio button choice.

I notice in fooling around just now that the MFi settings don’t always reflect the Smart 3D app settings, particularly with toggling the MFi mic control on or off. So perhaps part of the problem is the basic MFi controls built into iOS are not always on the same page as the ReSound Smart 3D app connections.

Question about ReSound app
#10

Controlling both HA’s together in MFi settings isn’t the answer. Today, my left HA lost connectivity to both the Smart 3D and MFi Hearing Devices. In MFi Devices, the battery showed it was very low (red), but that was just because it wasn’t connected. As soon as the HA was rebooted, it showed 100% charge (as it’s a zinc-air battery).

My next rabbit hole to go down is on the iPhone in iOS 16.x under Settings, Privacy & Security, Bluetooth, one can find a list of all the apps that have been granted Bluetooth access permission. I had granted a ton of apps BT access permission. I turned permission off for all but the Smart 3D app.

An inkling that some other app with BT access might be causing the HA connectivity problem I’m experiencing is that since the latest Smart 3D app update a couple of weeks ago, I could no longer turn my HA mics on or off with the Smart 3D app on my Apple Watch. When I turned off BT access for all the other apps, my Apple Watch just regained the ability to turn off and on my HA mics. To see which app might have been interfering with the HA mic on/off, I turned all the apps’ BT access on again one by one but didn’t lose the on/off mic control on the watch again yet. So not sure what’s going on there, but it seems BT access permissions can affect Smart 3D app behavior.

I will try letting only the Smart 3D app have BT access as an app and see if my iPhone to HA connectivity improves as a result. In retrospect, I don’t particularly see why the Kindle app, for example, needs BT access unless that’s so the app can use its text-to-speech feature to read a book to me (robotically). Similarly, for a bunch of other apps, I’ll give them BT access permission if I actually find I need BT access for an app function I actually need to use.

#11

Unfortunately iOS, at least in the user interface, groups Bluetooth and BLE together even though they are separate and incompatible with each other. If they combine application access permissions similarly, you may be correct.

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#12

Newest version of iOS has made connectivity a little flaky here as well. I only have one other device with BT enabled. I find it best to go into settings/Accessibility/Hearing Devices/My hearing aids and let it fill in the rest of the screen. Didn’t used to have to do that. Not always required, but I just do it when I put the aids in every morning.
Burying a dead chicken in the back yard also helps. :slight_smile:

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#13

Switching Bluetooth connectivity off for all apps, but the ReSound Smart 3D app is not the answer, either, to iPhone/Omnia connectivity/functionality issues.

Today I started streaming the 95th Academy Awards while I went out in my backyard and sideyard to work in the yard. The streaming cut in and out many times depending on how close I was to the house and various windows.

I came back in the house and could hear the Academy Awards show great through both my external mics and the streaming direct to my HA’s. I picked up my iPhone, which had remained inside and to which my HA’s had probably lost connection while I was outside. I found neither the MFi Hearing Devices app nor the Smart 3D app on the iPhone were connected to my HA’s. Both HA’s were clearly still strongly connected to the ReSound TV Streamer, though, as I could leave the TV, walk through the house and lose the connection, and pick it up again along with external mic sounds when I got close to the TV streamer and the TV again.

Neither force-killing the Smart 3D app nor rebooting my iPhone reestablished connectivity of the HA’s with the iPhone. Rebooting each HA individually worked, though.

So, perhaps an unfair summary. But clearly, ReSound device to ReSound device streaming is rock solid (TV streamer to HA’s), and at no time did my external mics die. But Apple to ReSound connectivity via the iPhone leaves something to be desired.

Perhaps the next rabbit hole to investigate is whether “iPhone separation” is a source of the lost connectivity/functionality of Omnia HA’s to my iPhone 14 Pro Max running iOS 16.3.1. I apologize to @stu if I’m derailing the thread he started about his wife’s problems, but my connectivity problems seem very similar to his wife’s (rebooting the HA’s always fixes her issues, too).

#14

Bluetooth is designed as a short range Personal Area Network (PAN) If you did not have the phone on a pocket or close by, your experience is expected behavior. Bluetooth does not have the range of Wi-Fi. That ibis because they are designed for different purposes.

#15

Question which is related to the experiences on here.

I’ve just had a client in, on a set of Omnias who has an iPhone SE: they were functioning fine. Last week Resound serviced them under warranty (replaced). As from now, she still has full comms on the phone via normal calls, but has lost the WhatsApp and FB Video duplex. I believe she can still hear them, but the mic function has dropped.

What’s the best workaround you’ve found for this?

#16

Jim, No apology necessary for derailing the thread. I think it is all the same issue - we are just encountering different tennicles of the octopus. Hopefully, someone from ReSound will read this and figure it out.

Some more “facts.”

My wife traded her Omnia (4 different units, two audiologists), for a brand new set of Resound One 9’s with the following results:

  1. When both are working correctly, the Omnia aids give better comprehension - judged by me, the absolutely non expert - by estimating how often she lost the thread of the conversation.

  2. The One’s gave significantly less feedback - but we believe it was because the domes fit better. There was no detectable feedback heard by the observer (me), where the Omnia aids drove me nuts (more, I suppose) whenever she got near the fridge or I operated the turn signals in the car.

  3. Both experienced the early battery failure - and when restarted, both continued to operate for hours with no battery charging. I believe it is not the battery.

Your note gave a significant hit. I believe there are two problems.

  1. When the iPhone is distant from the HAs, the link to the 3D (and Apple app) is lost. For some reason, it does not automatically recover when the HAs get closer to the iPhone. Sometimes, as you reported, the HAs continue to operate stand alone, but they don’t regain full operation until restarted either by charging or cycling them off and on. This is new with iPhone OS 16.x and I suspect is a new Apple feature.

  2. I’m guessing, but it seems that the iPhone/ReSound like eventually “wonders off”, causing a total failure of the HAs until the HAs are restarted with the iPhone nearby.

Since the Omnia is a significant hearing improvement compared to the One, and the problem is common with oth the One and Omnia model, and both the rechargeable and replaceable battery models, she is requesting her ever patient audiologist order a 5th set of Omnia with domes similar to those supplied with the Ones.

We are forwarding this not to the audiologist in hopes she forwards it to ReSound.

/Stu

#17

I think this is an artifact of the latest iPhone update???

My wife routinely used her iPhone with a set of earbuds when inconvenient to use her HAs. That stopped working because the function that allows switching from HAs, to speaker, or to headphones is gone.

I suspect that function also allows switching of audio to the HAs from your client’s apps.

If your client has an iPhone, you might try calling AppleCare - it is free and might help.

Please post the results - this is a disturbing change.

#18

In the past, with my KS6 Resound LiNX, whenever iPhone updates broke things there was a follow up firmware update for the HAs to resolve the issues. With my Rexton KS8, an iPhone update broke things after a year and I have had to suffer the issues for 3 years because Rexton never released an update.

Perhaps updated firmware on the aids broke some backward compatibility with less than the current OS update. Depending upon the age of the iPhone SE it may not be able to run the latest version. If that is the case I would ask Resound whether you could somehow downgrade the firmware on the aids and block upgrades.

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#19

If the aids have to re-pair, they’re supposed to be pairable only in the 1st 3 minutes after being turned on. I don’t know why they have to re-pair, though…

#20

I’ve submitted a bug report to Apple via its iPhone feedback page: Feedback - iPhone - Apple and I’ve e-mailed GN ReSound support several times now to describe my connectivity problems and reference @stu 's by providing a link to one of his posts. (The address I used was consumerhelp@gnresound.com). I got a reply from Timothy Snow at ReSound today that just said:

Please continue to keep us apprised of your experience.

Tech tips and help can be found at: [| ReSound US]

I guess having to reboot an HA or two once a day is not the end of the world, but it’s annoying and not something I expect for purchasing a device that’s a lot more expensive than my iPhone! Who knows if Apple or ReSound is the root cause of the problem? But it does seem now that MFi pairing and connectivity is the main highway between devices, and the Smart 3D app is just a window dressing interface on top of that. Apple should have an interface where “lost” devices can readily and automatically be reconnected by the mothership.