Anyone have any issues using their Phonak Marvels outdoors?

Returned my M70-R’s to my AuD yesterday with a list of issues re BT connection outdoors and the different ways I have tried to improve things; re-pairing, different phones, in/out of pocket. He is going to send them back to the supplier for “checking”. He also supplied me with a pair of trial Marvels for use in the meantime - he’s a nice guy. Australian laws are very strong in relation to goods being fit for purpose. If the BT issues can’t be fixed I could probably get my money back but the thing is I really like the aids in every other regard. I’d have to give it a lot of consideration before changing to another HA.

I had trials and they still suffered from choppy outdoors unfortunately. I think this is normal for these hearing aids and Phonak should resolve them via software updates maybe… idk

The issue might be mis-configured software on the Hearing Aids or not properly installed drivers, What OS might be another one.

I think I have a solution, which I may send to Phonak, regarding choppy streaming outdoors. Once I get my firmware update next week, I should be able to pair my Marvels to both my iPhone X and an old Series 3 Apple Watch. Then, I simply attach the watch to the back of my baseball cap and stream music from the watch … when the distance to the Marvels is only a few inches. Problem solved and very sheik looking too

@Sierra said:

Another solution may be to use an aluminum foil umbrella to reflect the signal to your ears!

And avoid alien influences or other nefarious forms of mindreading at the same time! , i.e. the tin foil hat!

O.K. I got the firmware update to my Marvels today and am happy to report that the Bluetooth outdoor streaming did seem much better … although not perfect. I would guess that on a 15 minute walk I only had two brief cutouts that were a fraction of a second each … and I can live with that.

And if you are streaming outdoors, forget having your phone in a pants pocket … I find that distance to the aids is much too far for uninterrupted Bluetooth. When outdoors I always have to keep my iPhone in the shirt pocket closest to my primary aid (so that the distance is no more than 10 inches). I have also noticed that wearing a leather jacket over my iPhone in a shirt pocket always interrupts the streaming, so the iPhone has to be moved to an upper jacket pocket!

I haven’t experienced any issues with my Marvels and my Galaxy S10+ being in either side pants pocket front or back. My left ear is the primary.

I have the same issue with my android phone. Except I don’t have a leather jacket lol. Phonak isn’t ready with their bluetooth streaming capabilities just yet. Feels like I am wearing a prototype of the hearing aid more than anything.

@Raudrive said:

before switching from Bluetooth adaptive bandwidth to fixed bandwidth.

Can you explain that a little more?

The setting is in Target under device’s Bluetooth.
At times I would hear distorted sound and sometimes nothing. Once the bandwidth was changed to fixed the problems went away. This is with Audeo M90 RT aids and a Samsung S9 phone. My wife has the Costco KS9 aids and a pretty new iPhone. Her aids are set on adaptive bandwidth and never has problems. Don’t understand why but that is how it is.

I think I saw the same settings under Bluetooth settings for the HA on the phone itself. Didn’t try it though.

More likely than your carrier it may be the phone. It has Bern my experience that some phones have more reliable Bluetooth than others. It may be that the problems are not so much the aids as they are the phone used.