Response to my inquiry to Signia:
"Hello and thank you for contacting us.
While we can’t comment or speculate on future product innovations, rest assured that our Signia customers will be among the first to know about them.
We hope this information is helpful. Thank you again for visiting our website and your interest in our products."
Samsung has had a hearing aid research group since at least 2014 with no published results.
Bluetooth 5 LE has been available since 2016.
I can only speculate that hearing aids are such a small market that manuf. don’t prioritize research/development.
I hope that the U.S. govt. regulation allowing hearing aids to be sold as consumer items instead of medical devices will open up this market.
Samsung had a functional hearing aid years ago. I demoed it and it was able to send remote mic Bluetooth audio from a galaxy s from across the room… Using the Galaxy’s mic. It looked a lot like a Siemens pure aid, but had the Samsung logo on it.
@ aggie60 posted this in another thread:
Response from my audiologist a few minutes ago.
“…I spoke with a rep from Oticon and they said they have no official date for being compatible with android phones but when they are compatible, it will just require an update to your hearing aids. He was aware of the article you sent and said that Oticon is working on it, but no official word has been made as of yet😊
Let me know if you have any more questions!”
OK I’ll bite. What the hell is ASHA?
Sent from the resident #1 Anagram hater…
Audio Streaming for Hearing Aids (aka Android low energy Bluetooth streaming) GN Hearing first to support direct Android streaming using ASHA
I suspect ASHA has a long way to go to become mainstream. The data at this link says that Apple has 50% of the mobile market in North America. So far only Google which is at 2.3% is the only one building ASHA into their mobile devices. That does not make much of a sales market potential for hearing aid manufacturers which in comparison to cell phone manufacturers are the small fish in the ocean. I suspect that until Samsung (26%) and LG (6%) and Motorola (5%) join in with their versions of Android, the hearing aid manufacturers will not take it too seriously. From their point of view MFi has a lot more sales potential.
My crystal ball is pretty fuzzy, but I’d guess Samsung will join in. I suspect for purchasers of high end hearing aids that Samsung’s percentage is higher than the overall mobile market (likely same is true for Apple. ) We’ve already heard from Starkey that they are joining in and strong rumors that Oticon will. I doubt Signia/Widex will ignore it. To me biggest questionmark is whether Phonak will stick with their generic approach or join in on a new standard.
I reached out to Google Accessibility to see if I could get any more info. They sent me this:
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwDrlVnkGLFkZZxTGvTjlvLbKdL
In short, nothing new, although the code for the framework is included. They didn’t even mention the Resound Quattro and seemed to emphasize the Beltone Amaze.
I’m interested in getting a pair of Phonak Audeo M-RTs but I’m waiting for ASHA compliance to use with Android (Pixel 4). If Phonak eventually incorporates ASHA will it require new hardware or will a software update be enough?
Phonak seems to have reject bot iPhone MFi and Android ASHA, and gone their own proprietary way. It would surprise me now if they would switch horses and come back to ASHA, But, you never know.
Phonak has no plans to adopt ASHA. It will take a long time for ASHA to spread to other Android device and will probably turn into a hot mess.
Using Universal Bluetooth profiles is the way to go, at least for the short to mid term.
Samsung has just released the first Beta of Android 10 for the Galaxy S10 and S10+. And it does incorporate ASHA. Target for full release version in North America is mid February, 2020.
Audiology Online has an upcoming CE on October 25th involving Resound and Smartphones. Might provide some info, but who knows. One thing I’m pretty confident of is that as new phones and hearing aids come out, they will not be glitch free. Considering how many issues there still are with made for iPhone hearing aids and updates, I suspect hearing aid wearers who stream will be very familiar with trouble shooting techniques.
“CE”? What’s that? …
“Continuing Education”
Hearing professionals need 10 hours a year of continuing education to retain a license in most states.
CE= Continuing Education
I was talking with someone from Oticon Canada a couple of weeks ago and she confirmed that there will be a firmware update with ASHA support. The date of the firmware release is TBD.
Oticon seemed like they would be doing it, but the big question is when. They’re Connect Clip was just about to be released for over a year.
Was looking at OnePlus SmartPhone forum. Their recent phones already have Android 10, but do not support ASHA.