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Issue with i90 Spheres and bluetooth connection to phone - separating media from calls

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Phonak apparently does not distinguish between media audio and phone call audio which means that I can’t selectively turn off media audio. As a result, whenever I receive certain types of emails or texts, the i90’s change the sound for 1-2 seconds. In addition, if anything is active on my phone, it transmits to the hearing aids and the sound is again briefly altered. The bluetooth connection for calls is convenient, but under a number of situations I find it better just to shutdown the bluetooth connection altogether. I assume that separating out the two types of audio is dependent on the chip that phonak uses, but do others have this issue and is there any way to solve it.

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Well that isn’t the hearing aids that is a function of the phone. And it depends on your phone. I have the Spheres and Samsung S25FE and I can go into the phone settings connections and Bluetooth then my aids and disable the media and call functions.

I also get a brief pause when a notification comes through. No suggestion for fixing it but it does result in losing a few words in whatever I was listening to. Overall I have better luck when I ‘forget’ my aides in . Pretty unfortunate considering the cost and hype from Phonak.

@dhsnyder said:

Phonak apparently does not distinguish between media audio and phone call audio

They do, as this is two different Bluetooth profiles being used, this can be done on phone setting and adjustments in target software.

Screenshot_20260609_061712

In reply to @cvkemp

It is not the phone per se as the iPhone 17 is capable of splitting call and media audio. I have done it with other hearing aids. I believe the issue is that the i90 software which is used in the iPhone does not allow for splitting the two types of audio. I have an old android phone and I see that if I paired with that, I could split the two but then I couldn’t have the other features of the phonak software. If you, or anyone, has paired with an iPhone and is able to split the two audios while still being able to tweak the variety of hearing programs, please let me know.

It isn’t the Phonak aids it is the way that the Bluetooth is setup more than likely a limitation that Apple chose to use. I am now retired but was an IT professional/ electronics technician/engineer. It is a setting that the sending side device has to be able to set. The receiving side, the hearing aids, has no way to control that setting. The aids receive what is sent to them.

Makes sense and it is quite possible that if I paired the i90’s with the iPhone using the iPhone software, I may be able to split the audios. After spending sometime creating several customized programs in the phonak software, I have been loathed to dump it and go to a ‘direct’ bluetooth connection as I do not believe I will have the same flexibility programming-wise. I may just have to bite the bullet and try switching. I would add that my audiologist called Phonak while I was in the office, and he was told (and I overheard) that splitting the audios was not possible - but he obviously meant while using the phonak ios software.

I will be honest I used iPhone and IOS for 9 years and I went back to Android because of the IOS limitations. Or I should say the limitations that Apple chooses to place on their devices.

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