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Rechargeable aids: wanted by customers or by factories?

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@Razzy said:

from my cold dead hand

Interesting metaphor. Reminds me of Max Planck’s famous observation that science advances “one funeral at a time”.

Edited

In reply to @x475aws

@Bimodal_user said:

in the case of disposable batteries, this progress is not existing.

@x475aws said:

But that’s not true.

I mean battery zinc-air technology. It is not progressing anymore that much, probably due to physics.
EDIT:
Alternatively, manufacturers can try to make workaround by connecting two batteries in series or in parallel, like in sound processors. However, even so, this setup still doesn’t provide as much power as a rechargeable battery, as I showed you in PDF fragment which I sent you one time.
END of EDIT.

@x475aws said:

Just talking about Oticon, everyone thought that Real was the end of the line for Oticon zinc-air aids, and all further improvements would be rechargeable only. Yet Verit came out earlier this year, with the same DNN as Intent and up-to-date connectivity. That’s the kind of progress which wasn’t supposed to be possible.

It’s because we are “lucky” that as the size of the transistors in the decreases, the power consumption decreases at similar or slightly higher computing power. However, this will not go on forever, unless with bigger size of , just for 675s or 2x13s disposable batteries? I don’t know.

Zinc-air battery is enough for Oticon or Starkey , because they are less sophisticated than Phonak’s DNN. They compensate this by outstanding work on mics directionality (especially when ), but I don’t know if directionality have not already reached its limits. EDIT: I can’t use that approach because I only have one hearing aid (a cochlear implant in the second ear), so I use relativeli simple 2-mics directionality, not 4-mics binaural… End of EDIT.

Probably the only way to compete with Phonak it making their DNNs more advanced, but it inevitably will cause more energy demand.

In reply to @Bimodal_user

@Bimodal_user said:

I mean battery zinc-air technology. It is not progressing anymore that much, probably due to physics.

Zinc-air output voltage is set by the chemistry, but the output current could be increased by enlarging the reaction area, even within a limited space, which is an engineering matter. Not saying it’s likely to happen. 675’s do have more room, more than 2x the surface area of 312’s or 13’s.

@Bimodal_user said:

as the size of the transistors in the DSP decreases, the power consumption decreases at similar or slightly higher computing power. However, this will not go on forever

I read that hearing aid chips use relatively large process sizes, compared to the state-of-the-art. So there may be room for improvement already.

@Bimodal_user said:

Zinc-air battery is enough for Oticon or Starkey DNNs, because they are less sophisticated than Phonak’s DNN.

My guess is that Sphere gets its improved performance the way Whisper described in a white paper. Whisper’s pocket-size external device had a processor which ran at mobile phone speed rather than hearing aid speed. The faster processor let them process incoming sound using algorithms that couldn’t run in real time on hearing aid earpiece processors. Sphere also has a faster processor, but it’s integrated into the earpiece, because it’s a few years later. That’s my guess, anyway. There’s a somewhere in there, but it isn’t the essence of the improvement.

I can believe that the current Sphere draws too much power for existing zinc-air batteries (also believed that about Intent until they released Verit on the same platform, but that’s a different matter). I’m not likely to buy Sphere because Phonak hasn’t worked for me. But much better hearing performance that’s only possible with rechargeable batteries is a tradeoff I’d consider making.

Rechargeable aids have simplified my life. I just put my aids on when I get up and forget about them until bedtime. At night I put them in their charger. If the power goes out the charger has battery backup so there isn’t any worry about them not charging. With Rechargeable aids I haven’t had any issues with sweating moisture. My life is almost like I have my hearing again.

Well said, I whole heartedly agree with the morning to night simplicity of the rechargeable approach & the battery backup charger simplifies life even more.

I can’t remember the last time I had a ‘low charge’ warning from my & they rarely get below ~30% even on a very long day with lots of streaming.

In reply to @RobHooft

40 or 50 years ago there was a line between professions and other lines of work like trades. Professions had specific formal training, usually an apprenticeship or trainee period (with an expected level of expertise) and then moving into the professional role, often marked with changes in licensure or certifications. An association (or family of them) to promote adherence, monitor and maintain standards, provide testing and similar activities related to entering the field. I think market8ng/advertisement made professional migrate from its prior usage to an “I get paid to do this” meaning. “Professional window washer” vs lawyer, architect, engineer, pilot, etc. I took (and passed) the “Engineer in training” exam once upon a time. With logged experience and passing the Professional Engineer test, I could have applied for the PE license. A PE can sign and seal plans for private and public projects. Although I worked 40 years in the field, I was never under a PE and it would never have helped me beyond the prestige of putting it in my signature block.

WH

The system you describe has directs roots in the medieval (European) guild system.Here in Switzerland it is very well developed with widely offered (and praised) apprenticeships, for a variety of specializations.

Edited

This is primarily a Phonak centric site.

Usually followed by Oticon and then COSTCO.

Starkey is an outlier on this site.

Because Starkey has the Edge in COSTCO now, as the Soundgear Amp, they are starting to get a little more acceptance.

Hearing aids are kind of like cars.

People generally have a preferred brand.

Let me add this.

The advise given on this site usually applies to hearing aids universally.

I had a bad warble in my first set of Starkey.

My audiologist did not know how to fix it because I could not describe exactly what it was.

Someone else had a similar problem with I think Oticon.

They were told to turn off the feedback manager.

I told my audiologist to do the same thing to mine. She thought I was nuts. It worked.

@freezerman404 said:

I had a bad warble in my first set of Starkey.

My audiologist did not know how to fix it because I could not describe exactly what it was.

Someone else had a similar problem with I think Oticon.

They were told to turn off the feedback manager.

I told my audiologist to do the same thing to mine. She thought I was nuts. It worked.

I plead Guilty as Charged!

I’m glad it worked for you. It was a journey!

Edited

We are among the privileged few who experience this phenomena. Most people either accept it, or are oblivious to it, so it does not exist for them!

It is indeed a true honor to be a “Warbler”

In reply to @x475aws

Factory side here, we build aids in China for other brands. Nobody in 173 posts has been on the manufacturing end of this, so rather than re-argue the preference I’d rather answer the two things that got left open.

x475aws is right in #22 and that’s worth saying plainly. The top platform being rechargeable only is a product decision, not a physics limit. We do the same thing. When you segment a lineup, the feature that costs nothing to withhold is the one that ships on the newer housing, and the newer housing is sealed. So people who want the best processing get moved to rechargeable whether or not they ever wanted to leave batteries. Calling that a customer preference is doing a lot of work.

Where the mechanism usually gets told wrong is the current argument. It isn’t average draw. A 312 runs a modern DSP perfectly well. What it struggles with is the peak while the radio is transmitting, because zinc air has high internal impedance and the voltage sags under bursts. You can engineer around that with a 675 and more bulk capacitance.

Which is david.hendon’s question in #77, whether anyone actually knows if it could be made to work. It could. A 675 aid with a de rated streaming profile is buildable today. It doesn’t get built because the volume isn’t there to pay for a separate housing tool, and housing tooling is where the money goes.

The part I should hand over rather than wait to be asked about is the battery door. It’s the most expensive piece of the shell. A hinge, two contacts and a hole through the case. It’s the single biggest leak path for an rating and it’s a large share of mechanical warranty returns. Delete it and the factory gains a sealing spec, loses a failure mode and drops an assembly step. So the honest answer to the thread title is both, and the factory half of that is real and it isn’t small.

And the cost of it lands on the buyer in a way that mostly gets left out here. A sealed cell has an end date. Around year four or five it wants replacing as a paid service, and on older platforms that service quietly stops being offered, at which point something repairable has become something replaceable. x475aws has the direction of the incentive right even where the mechanism was off.

On the disaster case that opened this thread, since it never really got answered: most charger cases only hold two or three full charges in reserve, so the case on its own isn’t the answer. What does answer it is that nearly all of them take USB, so anything that makes 5V keeps you going, a power bank, a car socket, a small panel. The other side is worth knowing too. Zinc air cells have a shelf life of roughly three to four years sealed, so a stockpile isn’t open ended either. Both routes have an edge, they just sit in different places.

Happy to be checked on any of it.

@luogangan said:

A 675 aid with a de rated streaming profile is buildable today

@luogangan said:

It doesn’t get built because the volume isn’t there to pay for a separate housing tool

So could a size 13, which would then bring this into main stream of the bulk of hearing aids, 312 sucks even without etc since with13’s aren’t that much bigger and a whole lot smaller then rechargeable without all the rest of the junk required to keep them chuggling along.

@luogangan said:

It’s the most expensive piece of the shell. A hinge, two contacts and a hole through the case

Seriously, it’s so cheap to tool this, how stingy/tight are the manufacturers, it’s peanuts for companies making hundreds of millions in profit,

@luogangan said:

It’s the single biggest leak path for an IP rating and it’s a large share of mechanical warranty returns.

Yep but so long as you don’t go swimming or taking showers it’s not a problem, over a long period of time you can get corrosion on the battery contacts, which is humidity and sweat, nano coating the body and circuit boards was and is well proven method of reducing the problems associated with this, the thing is tho, rechargeable batteries are costing them so much more to manufacture and replace as any warranty claim is replaced with a new unit.

@luogangan said:

Around year four or five it wants replacing as a paid service

We’ve seen much sooner then that, more like 2 to 3 years for replacement.

@luogangan said:

Zinc air cells have a shelf life of roughly three to four years sealed,

I recently used up a box of 6 year olds, I didn’t notice much difference when using them.

Thirteen is the better answer than 675 and you’re right to push me there. A 13
cell holds up under the streaming peaks well enough, and a 13 housing is barely
larger than a 312 one while being smaller than most rechargeables once you count
the sealed cell. If anyone were going to build the thing, that’s the size they’d
build it in.

On the tooling being peanuts, you’re right and my wording sent you the wrong way.
When I said most expensive piece of the shell I meant its share of the shell bill
of materials, not that anyone can’t afford it. A housing tool is tens of
thousands of dollars. For these companies that’s a rounding error and it would be
dishonest of me to hide behind it.

What actually keeps the variant from existing is what follows the tool, and it’s
annual rather than one off. Every housing variant becomes a separate line in the
fitting software, its own firmware validation matrix, its own regulatory file in
every market you sell in, its own spare parts, its own repair flow, its own slot
in the dispenser catalogue. None of that is expensive either. It’s just
permanent, and it has to be justified every planning cycle by a volume number
that keeps shrinking.

Then the catalogue finishes it off. Dispensers stock what moves. Once the battery
version drops below some share, it comes off the order form, and after that
nobody can buy it, which shows up next year as proof nobody wanted it.

So the honest version isn’t that it costs too much. It’s that nobody inside these
companies has a target that gets better by keeping the battery version alive, and
plenty have targets that get better by cutting SKUs. That’s a worse answer than
expense, because expense you could argue with.

Written in Chinese and have translated to English by . Not perfect but understandable.

One aspect that I have not read in this thread (I may have missed it) relates to child safety.

Button cell batteries can cause the death of a child if swallowed as they can get stuck and burn through the gut.

As someone with small grandchildren I aim to have as few button cells in the house as possible.

Here in Australia button cells are packaged to be child-resistant, but it is so easy to drop and loose a small battery when replacing one in a hearing aid.

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