PHONAK Sphere I90 - eccessive battery drain on left hearing aid

If the receiver shorted out that would cause the battery drain.

@ready123ca said:

How do your aids work on higher frequency speech (female) in a restaurant environment? My loss is similar to yours which is why I’m asking.

I can hear my wife in a noisy restaurant because my AuD turned on SoundRecover 2 (Phonak’s frequency lowering).

Long-term loud noise exposure has destroyed my hearing above 3000-3500 Hz. The only comfortable way to hear my wife in loud noise is a combination of Spheric Mode from my Phonak I90’s and SoundRecover, plus custom earmolds.

My previous P90 Phonaks worked well with a Roger On clipped to her collar. However, I had open domes, so nothing helped without the Roger.

The noise leaking through the open domes somewhat cancels the speech enhancement of the aids while processing out the noise.

Too much extra volume at higher frequencies also saturates my lower frequencies, so I switched to frequency lowering, which works for me.

I hope to try my Roger On again soon to see if it improves things, but I forget to bring it now since it’s not needed to hear in loud situations as it was with the P90’s.

David

@Lcg207, when your receiver was bad, did the battery drain progressively faster, or did it stay the same? I’m wondering if the receiver might have been the culprit in my case well.

However, if the receiver has a short and causes extra battery drain, I would expect it to be roughly the same every day. What did you experience?

But if it was a “short” you couldn’t possibly use it at the same time right, I mean it’d sound terrible wouldn’t it?

Looks just like what I was seeing.

@tenkan, I think the latest generation of receivers might be more complicated. ReSound shows the serial number of the receiver in the fitting app and detects if the receiver has changed. They must have an ID chip built in.

Phonak’s latest receiver connectors have a lot more pins (8?) as well. They might be doing something similar.

Having an ID chip (could be just an EEPROM) would have other benefits as well. The manufacturer could store calibration data on there, which would enable them to guarantee more consistent output levels even if there are manufacturing differences between individual receivers.

Of course the flip-side is that having additional complexity in the receiver (and I don’t know what Phonak is doing) means that more stuff can break. And it might possibly break in non-obvious ways, meaning the audio output is still fine, but there is increased current draw elsewhere.

It didn’t actually change the quality of the sound.

Will send them back to the mamufacturer for a check just to take advantage of that insurance anyways. My AuD will provide a new pair for the time being (:

@Lcg207 said:

It started by draining just a little—10 or 15 percent. Eventually it drained 50-60 percent almost immediately…

I wonder if this was related to the mysterious receiver update that was quietly mentioned at the same time as the announcement of the Ultra upgrade. When I asked Phonak, they replied that it was a fix for a problem that affected only a small percentage of Infinio users (and not an enhancement to normal functionality), and if everything was working OK there was no reason to swap out receivers. Hmmm…

I thought the same thing when I saw that. I was also recently asked to participate in a survey where Phonak users with battery drainage issues were specifically mentioned.

Yes, just with this infinio line we’ve seen this and the manufacturer has confirmed that a damaged receiver can drain the battery.

The receiver change is a bit trickier for some people too (including clinicians) and if it’s reinserted at a slightly wrong angle it can cause problems. I’ve never had trouble, but we have a staff member who absolutely cannot get the receivers out. I can’t figure out the difference between how she tries to do it versus me, but it’s wild to watch. Maybe her hands aren’t as dry as mine or maybe the grip strength for the younger generation is lower? But phonak did make a change to the friction fit to make it slightly easier.