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Phonak Audeo Sphere I90: Classic Bluetooth Problem with iPhone

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UPDATE:

Thanks for all your suggestions! I think the best solution for me is to follow WhiteHat’s suggestion to disable temporarily via the Control Center. That seems the simplest and quickest way. I appreciate all your comments!

I recently began using Phonak Audeo Sphere I90s. They have classic Bluetooth, not , which means that every sound that comes from an iPhone– phone calls, notifications, audio from video clips on the Internet, etc. go directly to the . There is no way to switch them to Speaker. This has created a few issues for me:

  1. Without HAs or with my older Signia 7AX devices, if I misplaced my iPhone, I simply called it from my landline and tracked down the ringing. Now this is impossible, because the ringing is in my Phonak HAs, regardless of the location of the phone. Also, the various dings and tweets of notifications throughout the day are extremely distracting.
    Tech support gave me two options: turn off notifications (nope, I need them) or turn off Bluetooth (giant nope, because without Bluetooth connected, the app won’t function).
    I am learning to live with the annoyances, and shut off my devices when I can’t find my phone. I am unhappy that choices for audio don’t exist.
  2. Occasionally I’ll be with another person and want to share with them music or a video with sound on my iPhone. Impossible, because the sound is going to my ears only, and I can’t inconspicuously shut off my devices or disconnect from Bluetooth.

Has anyone come up with a way around these issues– especially the second one, which highlights to everyone that I am hearing impaired? When I try to share something from YouTube or social media with a companion and am told, “There’s no sound,” it’s mortifying! Recently, without thinking, I asked someone to identify a bird from a recording I had made of its song. I felt like a fool, when I selected the recording, and they heard nothing.

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In short, no. You could probably rig up some kind of horrendous sysstem with wires and an audio router for the signal for sharing but not practically for a phone. I do wonder if, in the blu tooth settings of the phone there is a way to switch the type of device to headphones and then you get your speaker control back. you could try that but I’ve never done it myself I’m afraid.

All we can hope is that when finally finally comes out and the iPhone finally finally supports LE audio, that this will all change somewhat. Everyone harps on about Phonak classic blu tooth and to me it’s just lazy that they don’t have the iPhone LE standard implemented since with that, you have a lot more flexibility with the hearing aids and the delay is far less significant.

I did a trial with the new Signia IX devices, and they have gone over to classic also. Their AX models had . I don’t see the point.

Widex and Oticon use iPhone LE, I think maybe Starkey also, but they don’t have the Spheric performance. Oh maybe Resound does also actually thinking about it, think it might have classic and LE.

If you’re talking about performance in noise my Starkey Edge work really well in noise.

I’ve been in restaurants where everyone is screaming at one another. Used Edge mode. Worked perfectly.

This is the designed behavior of a bluetooth audio device, not just hearing aids. Every headphone/earbuds that uses works like that.

If you have other apple devices, you can use the FindMy feature.

There are plenty of ways to route the audio

(1) When sharing a video, you can just press a “button” on the app (Apple Music, YouTube ,etc) to switch the audio to the phone speaker.
(2) You can just click the BT button in control center (quick swipe from the upper right corner). 3 second process
(3) You can click on the share button on the app (depending on the app) and share the media.

So yes, there are ways to switch it to the speaker, but you can’t have the BT audio and the speaker on at the same time.

Maybe I misunderstood the question, if so, please let me know

@Bird said:

Occasionally I’ll be with another person and want to share with them music or a video with sound on my iPhone. Impossible,

I think this one is easy. If your app doesn’t have a control on it (like my podcast app), drag from the upper right corner to pull up the control panel.

IMG_2526

In the upper right of my control panel is a control for audio. If I poke that, it comes up.

IMG_2527

I was listening to a song from music when I did this. If I hit “iPhone” above where it shows the item for my hearing aid, sound will come out the speakers on the phone. Same thing can be done to switch it back when I’m done sharing with someone. Same thing can be done to move a call to speaker phone mode. Hope this helps. You can modify your control panel quite a bit to make it how you want.

WH

@Bird said:

Also, the various dings and tweets of notifications throughout the day are extremely distracting.

This one is easy. Just turn off sounds on the notifications but keep notifications turned on. That way you don’t get all the notifications pings in your ears.

I only have phone, FaceTime and messages sounds on. The rest are turned off.

IMG_3905

I carry my phone all day in a pouch, so no need to locate it when it rings. Yes, notifications are a struggle. The solution is to use them very, very sparsely (set them by the app).

Switching between and speaker: I am probably extremely old-fashioned, but when I call a person my assumption is always this is a one-on-one conversation- I would not “inconspicuously” switch to a speakerphone use and let others listen in (or record conversations). Otherwise, White Hat’s solution for Apple devices looks good.

In reply to @OcramSagev

You did not misunderstand! I think your suggestion about disabling in the control center is a great idea– provided that I remember to turn it back on (otherwise, the Phonak app will be inactivated). I always forget how handy the control center is. Thank you for reminding me. That seems to be the most expedient solution, and is almost as uncomplicated as sharing is for someone without putting their iphone on speaker! Thanks again!

In reply to @Zebras

My only sound notifications are for text messages, WhatsApp, Messenger, and phone calls. But they amount to a lot, especially when I’m in a quiet place!

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