That puzzles me since Bluetooth has been out a while so you would think a “standard setting” would be be established by now? So ’s on the market today use either Bluetooth Classic or Low energy Bluetooth. If that’s correct which of the two is better (connection wise) and which one will standing in a few years.
To confuse thing more I thought I read somewhere that Widex uses their own “proprietary” bluetooth connection or something slightly different then Bluetooth classic or low energy. Just trying to figure out if one is better then the other or if maybe it doesn’t really matter at all.
The low energy is also lower voltage and lower battery usage. What is better is hard to say. It would be nice if all used a standard that connects to all Bluetooth devices. But Bluetooth standards also change quite often
All kinds of “loaded” in there
The problem is battery consumption and size.
Apple made their own proprietary bluetooth extension based on bluetooth LE that many ’s adopted. This is the “Made for iPhone” title. Only usable with an idevice.
Phonak has made the B-Direct and the Marvels that use so-called Classic. These can connect to any compatible bluetooth device.
Pretty much all HA’s can connect to an external device that can then connect to any compatible bluetooth device but many of us would rather just carry the phone as that one external device.
Phonak has opened the door for classic Bluetooth direct connection. I expect other manufacturers to go that way too.
The problem was that companies thought classic Bluetooth was too much for a hearing aid, for direct connection. So could work but BLE doesn’t have an audio standard. It was really designed for data and signaling (alerts, medical, etc). Apple worked out a method for sending audio in BLE data packets.
Now, with direct connect with classic Bluetooth being possible, proprietary solutions will no longer be needed.
I think the Phonak implementation has chilled the market but that will probably not last too long. Bluetooth is really not that hard to work with so I would expect all the manufacturers to catch up or pass Phonak when size, radio, power issues are improved over what Phonak came out with. Then Phonak will have to update theirs to have better performance.
A2DP provides CD quality, 44.1 kbps, 2 channel stereo audio
HFP provides telephone quality, 10 kps, 1 channel mono audio (or a 16 kbps if wideband speech is supported)
These modes were designed long before anyone thought they would be used for hearing aids.
Bluetooth low energy is completely different. It doesn’t have any built-in profiles, but rather it has GATT (generic attribute) which is like a tool-kit. As @Don said, doesn’t have built-in audio streaming, so it has to be implemented by cooperation between manufacturers (e.g., Apple or Google/Android, cooperating with manufacturers). There aren’t any standards, so the implementations will be open, only to the degree that the cooperating parties to share the details. Apple licenses things like this. Android publishes them as standards. Maybe the Bluetooth Special Interest Group will catch up and define some open standards to fill the void.
I disagree with @Don that bluetooth classic is the direction. BLE offers a lot of improvements, including lower power consumption and better audio quality. It also discards the Bluetooth classic baggage. Having used both MFI and bluetooth classic, MFI is a better implementation.
Hot Springs Village, Arkansas
