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How to temporarily disconnect Oticon OPNs from iPhone?

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I’m trialing (i.e., new to) Oticon OPNs, so this is probably a stupid question. I successfully paired the with my iPhone, downloaded and installed the Oticon ON App, and am able to hear telephone calls and iPhone-installed music through my HAs.

But I can’t figure out how to briefly disconnect the iPhone-to-HA connection. If the ON App has an on/off feature, I can’t find it. The Oticon literature doesn’t say how to do this. Apple general instructions say: “When you turn off your hearing aid, it disconnects from your iOS device. When you turn on your hearing aid, open and close the battery doors on your hearing aid to connect again.” but my OPNs have no off switch other than opening the battery door, and opening and then closing doesn’t disconnect the iPhone-to-HA link (e.g., when I play music, I still hear it through HAs). Turning iPhone off and on doesn’t disconnect either. I can’t believe I have to go through the many-step unpairing process to temporarily disconnect the iPhone-to-HA link.

Thanks in advance for help.

12 people in this conversation9 min readJump to latest

It depends on why you want to disconnect the OPN from the iPhone.

If it is to connect another Bluetooth device (like a loudspeaker), just set the iPhone MFI section on Automatic selection and the other bt device will take priority over the OPN. No need to disconnect the OPN. Then when you’re done with the bt device, just disconnect it and the iPhone will reroute sound to the OPN again.

If it is to choose the iPhone loudspeaker or the iPhone regular speaker (where you listen by putting the iPhone on your ear) in the phone calling mode, then you are already given an option to select which of the 3 modes you want. No need to turn off bt. But turning off bt will achieve the same thing. Except later on you’d have to enable bt again for the OPN. But some other apps may not give you this option like the phone app, in which case you’d have to just turn off bt like Texas Bob said.

TexasBob & Volusiano: Thank you for your responses.

Volusiano: Sorry I’m so dense, but after reading online instructions and fooling with my iPhone, I still can’t find where I go (i.e., sequence of selections) to get to my “option to select which of the three modes” :

@Volusiano said:

If it is to choose the iPhone loudspeaker or the iPhone regular speaker (where you listen by putting the iPhone on your ear) in the phone calling mode, then you are already given an option to select which of the 3 modes you want.

Edited

To disconnect your hearing aids: On your iPhone, go to settings, click on Blue Tooth, in the list of devices, you should see your Oticons, listed and “Connected”, then you’ll see an “i” with a circle around it on the right edge. Click that “i” and you’ll get a new panel with option to “Disconnect” or “Forget this device”. Cick “Disconnect”

The three options that the other responder were referring to come up whenever you receive a phone call with a device connected. You first “Accept” the call, then you will have options on the screen, one of which is “Audio”. If you click on “Audio”, then you’ll see your three options (iPhone, Speaker, or Bluetooth).

Simply “Disconnecting” through Settings/Bluetooth does not unpaired the phone from the earpieces. When you want them back online, just go back to Settings/Bluetooth, and click the Oticon line again to reconnect.

@moccasin said:

To disconnect your hearing aids: On your iPhone, go to settings, click on Blue Tooth, in the list of Bluetooth devices, you should see your Oticons, listed and “Connected”, then you’ll see an “i” with a circle around it on the right edge. Click that “i” and you’ll get a new panel with option to “Disconnect” or “Forget this device”.

Actually you won’t find the OPN on the list of regular Bluetooth devices as mentioned above. It can only be found under Settings->General ->Accessibility ->MFI Hearing devives.

You can’t really disconnect the OPN anywhere. You can Forget This Device on the OPN if you drill into the OPN connection option, but there’s no option to disconnect. If Bluetooth is on then the OPN is connected, unless the Bluetooth is off, then the OPN is not being streamed to, although it’s still connected to the iPhone via Bluetooth.

The bottom line is that the OPN can’t be treated like same way as a regular Bluetooth device. It’s treated as a special MFI Hearing device connected through the General ->Accessibility->MFI Hearing Device menu.

In reply to @Overoaked

@Overoaked said:

TexasBob & Volusiano: Thank you for your responses.

Volusiano: Sorry I’m so dense, but after reading online instructions and fooling with my iPhone, I still can’t find where I go (i.e., sequence of selections) to get to my “option to select which of the three modes” :

@Volusiano said:

If it is to choose the iPhone loudspeaker or the iPhone regular speaker (where you listen by putting the iPhone on your ear) in the phone calling mode, then you are already given an option to select which of the 3 modes you want.

Like Moccasin said, it’s an option for the iPhone phone app. It may or may not be available in a different app. Really depends on whether the app has it or not. It’s not a general option for all apps.

There is not a quick and easy way to disconnect. The turn-off individual bluetooth methods described in this thread don’t help with with Hearing Aids, they do not show up on your Bluetooth device list.
You can disconnect the devices without ‘forgetting’ them via the settings, general, accessability, hearing devices. Click on your OPNs, listed at top. Uncheck both ‘stream to left/right device’ checkboxes. You will have to go back to same spot to re-enable.
Cheers.

@MrAerodynamic said:

You can disconnect the devices without ‘forgetting’ them via the settings, general, accessability, hearing devices. Click on your OPNs, listed at top. Uncheck both ‘stream to left/right device’ checkboxes. You will have to go back to same spot to re-enable.

This is a good suggestion to stop streaming to the OPN so that the iPhone will reroute the sound through its loud speakers, but it’s not really the same as a Disconnect. The OPN technically is still connected to the iPhone, it’s just that it won’t stream even though connected.

This may seem like splitting hair by definition, but the difference is that usually a re connection may take up a few seconds to re establish, while re enabling the streaming is almost instantaneous once you’re inside that menu.

Agreed. Using this method isn’t truly ‘disconnecting’. Not exactly sure what we are trying to accomplish. To me, the advantage with not ‘forgetting’ the device is you don’t have to cycle power to your to turn eveything back on again. I think it would be a nice to have a disconnect feature, but is probable they are trying to protect us from ourselves. :-).

@MrAerodynamic said:

Agreed. Using this method isn’t truly ‘disconnecting’. Not exactly sure what we are trying to accomplish. To me, the advantage with not ‘forgetting’ the device is you don’t have to cycle power to your HAs to turn eveything back on again. I think it would be a nice to have a disconnect feature, but is probable they are trying to protect us from ourselves. :-).

Actually this approach that you suggested ( stop streaming) is much better than disconnecting (even though there isn’t one). So Apple has thought ahead and gave us the right option. Only if they’d give us a short cut to do this instead of having to wade through many settings pages to get there.

TexasBob, Volusiano, moccasin, MrAerodynamic: Thanks again for your answers and explanations. I actually printed them out. Brings to mind the “simple questions don’t always have simple answers” adage.

Edited
@TexasBob said:

The quickest way to turn off bluetooth is to swipe up from the bottom of your phone and look for this ICON:

http://icons.iconarchive.com/icons/ampeross/qetto-2/256/bluetooth-icon.png

Tap it to turn bluetooth off. Do the same thing to turn it back on.

The original question is not really how to turn off Bluetooth but how to temporarily disconnect the OPN. If the OP wants to disconnect the OPN to use another Bluetooth device then turning off Bluetooth won’t work to use another Bluetooth device.

Just clarifying. But I agree that the suggested method above is the fastest way to turn off Bluetooth. That’s what I do when I want to use the iPhone’s loudspeaker.

He never said why he wants to disconnect. He may, indeed, want to use another Bluetooth device. If so, then there is another way to re-route streaming to another device. However, that is not what he asked.

I simply didn’t read anything into his question.

Thanks again to all who have responded to my original post. In spite of wearing for over 35 years, I’m just now trialing Oticon OPNs paired to my iPhone, so I’m in a learning mode.

To try to answer questions as to why I think I sometimes want to disconnect the pairing: 1) I’ve read that HA battery drains much faster when Bluetooth is activated. I don’t always carry my iPhone, but I usually leave it on most of the time. I don’t use Bluetooth for anything else. So I presumed it to be prudent to disconnect when I’m away from my iPhone for a few hours. And based on your responses, I assume that simply turning off Bluetooth is the easiest way to accomplish that. 2) While this probably happens infrequently, suppose I want to ask a colleague, “Listen to Mary’s voicemail on my phone. Can you figure out what she wants?” Or, “Listen to this song by the Screaming Zombies that I just downloaded from iTunes.” In each case, I need to switch from HAs to iPhone speaker. And in each case I can see that there are multiple ways to accomplish this.

Please let me know if what I’ve said here reflects a misunderstanding.

If I understand correctly…the mere fact of having the bluetooth radio on at any end can consume some power at that end. Certainly when it’s actively moving data from one device to another it would use more power.
Some might argue that the idle, waiting to connect mode would barely use any power and that it effectively auto shuts off. But it’s still on. Waiting.

On my smartphone (not iphone) I turn off all the radios when I’m not using them. Cell data, bluetooth, NFC, GPS, wifi. If I need something from one I’ll turn its radio on. Then off again.

All of this applies to both ends. I believe there’s an airplane mode like with a cell phone that you can fully turn off the bluetooth radio on the ’s.

But hey what do I know? I don’t have an iphone or streamer device.

In reply to @Overoaked

The others have given you good answers. To let someone else listen to Mary’s voicemail, you could turn off Bluetooth as I said before, or there is another way…

Swipe up as I said before and you’ll get a screen similar to this:

IMG_0207

In that top right box, tap on the little blue arcs. That will bring up something like this:

IMG_0208

Touch “iPhone” and your colleague can listen to your phone.

I hope this helps.

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