Phonak Ultra upgrade - how do we feel about it?

Has anyone run into a problem of the bluetooth now being so good it won’t disconnect? there are times I disconnect them from my phone and within 2 minutes it has reconnected. Or if i manually switch a call from bluetooth to speaker, the hearinaids will override and take over in under 30 seconds. This never happened before the upgrade.

I don’t have my Spheres yet but when I need to use the speaker phone I disable the Bluetooth on my phone, because my INTENT1 will sometimes do the same thing.

@Teewens said:

Not sure how to find which version of Autosense I have

I don’t have Infinios, but have been following threads about them.

The original Sphere’s had Autosense6. However, it only showed up in Target as “Autosense”. The Virtos came out with Autosense7, but still never showed the version number in Target.

If you’ve successfully upgraded to Ultra, it will be Autosense7

@SandraN said:

but I want a focus on speech - eg the theatre.

Same here. Have you found an ideal setting for the theatre?

Ultra upgrade not available at the VA said maybe available after January she called 2 people at Iowa city va.

It will not be available until the VA IT security has approved it to be put on the Clinics computers

@cvkemp said:

No way that activevent can work for my hearing loss needs.

Active vents are for people who generally need an open fit (normal lows) but want the benefits of a closed fit for streaming and noise. People who are already in closed fits (hearing loss at lows) don’t need to worry about the active vent.

The VA IT group is hiber about what does on the workstations. It is more about the Target software and Gene2 software, etc. They test the software to it death, trying to find bugs that could cause any type of crash or security issues. The workstations that have the fitting software is airgaped, meaning they can’t connect to the internet and possibly not to any outer networks in the clinic.

Thanks, Sandra. My audiologist set up a special Theater program for me, but a few weeks later it mysteriously disappeared along with other adjustments he had made. Since then I’ve been using the Spheric program, like you, for Theatrical performances and it has helped a lot. Has anyone else had their audi’s adjustments unexpectedly undo themselves?

I’ve been running the Ultra firmware upgrade for about a week now, and I’m intentionally holding off on any firm judgment because the improvement feels subtle rather than dramatic. A few early impressions:

• Speech separation feels slightly cleaner

• Background noise seems a bit more “organized”

• Spatial cues feel a touch more stable in busy environments

• No major change in loud noise (good or bad)

• No surprise regressions so far

What I don’t want to do is rush back to my audiologist after 5–7 days and chase tiny adjustments before I understand what Ultra is actually doing over time. I want my next visit to be based on a real observation window.

Questions for others who’ve lived with Ultra longer:

1. Did you notice it “settling in” over multiple weeks?

2. Did Ultra change how often you needed manual programs vs Sphere/AutoSense?

3. Did anyone compare Ultra with their REM-based fitting before vs after?

4. Were there any subtle changes you only noticed after a couple of weeks?

5. Anyone see classifier behavior that seemed different over time?

Not looking for hype or horror stories—just real, long-term impressions of how Ultra behaved after the initial novelty period.

Thanks to anyone who can share signal rather than noise.

I feel wery wery baaad, I do believe that phonak could (must) have had this technology 5 years ago, but have chosen to not release it until after lumity…

Meaning we could have had Infinio instead of paradise…

But MONEY….

I wish there is a recycling program from the big 5 or an EU directive, so that HA could be sent to manufacturer for an upgrade, be it free within the warranty period or for a 25% of the original price as a fee, so we can have a descent today’s tech.

But I do feel wery wery baaad

What do you think?

Am I wright or am I wong?

As an IT professional ,software system engineer, and electronics technician/engineer I have to say that it was in development or on the drawing board about a decade ago but engineering and development takes a long time. And to me regulations takes a lot of time to bet approval and there is also patents timing too. It is an experience and time consuming process.

My understand is that the Spheric AI was in development for quite a while on larger computing platforms. The biggest challenge was to go from these larger platforms to mobile devices and then to incredibly tiny computing devices like hearing aids. That is what took so much time and engineering effort.

Jordan

@Baltazard said:

I do believe that phonak could (must) have had this technology 5 years ago, but have chosen to not release it until after lumity…

Not so sure about that, at least in terms of the DeepSonic chip and Spheric Speech. Neural network programming is pretty new as an actual applied technology in the field; and even today, you don’t see a whole lot of standalone gadgets with that kind of technology, much less in a package as small and low-powered as a hearing aid.

You could maybe make a case that hearing aids were somewhat behind the curve in terms of Bluetooth connectivity, but I don’t think the same can be said about their implementation of AI.