Costco Kirkland Signature 9.0 (Product Information)

re: Much easier to hold the phone closer than to take hearing aids out.

I wasn’t taking a hearing aid out to get a better connection to the phone. I was simply reducing the distance between my mouth and the mic in the aid. When there is a lot of background noise, it occurs to me that it is difficult for any hearing aid mic (located on the top of one’s ear) to pick up your voice properly. At least that’s my theory here. As I noted earlier, I have only had the KS9s for a week or so, and am now just testing out the mobile phone answering issue in various environments.

The Roger pen is surprisingly good at picking up sounds clearly across a room. Pretty amazing what is being done with hearing aids.
My wife’s KS9 aids are doing well. She is happy.

@ThomF said:

When there is a lot of background noise, it occurs to me that it is difficult for any hearing aid mic (located on the top of one’s ear) to pick up your voice properly. At least that’s my theory here.

I agree with your theory. That is the basic issue with using the hearing aid mics instead of the phone mic.

It would be nice to have the option of using the mic on the mobile phone, and yet hear the sound from the hearing aids. I’m assuming that would require a software fix from Phonak, however.

There was somebody some time back who claimed his Starkey’s could be used handsfree with his iPhone. Occasionally we get these posts that just don’t make sense.

@Sierra said:

That is the way that MFi works. Phonak’s philosophy must be a little different.

MFi works that way (using the iPhone mic) because it is using a stereo 1-way streaming protocol, not a handsfree protocol (which incorporates a remote mic) like BT HF. So Apple couldn’t do a full handsfree implementation with MFi (using HA mics) if they wanted to. (Unless there is a hidden option in MFi audio streaming to support a backchannel.)

On the other hand, Phonak has nothing to do with whether an Android phone uses the HA mics or the phone mic for BT Handsfree. That’s up to the phone OS, and all indications are that currently they just embrace the BT Handsfree and use the remote mic with the remote speaker(s). It would be nice if phone BT Handsfree supported use of the phone’s mic regardless of whether your handsfree device is a Plantronics headset, Bose headphones, or a BT HA. But it’s up to Android and/or the Phone App on your particular Android phone, not up to Phonak.

@MDB said:

There was somebody some time back who claimed his Starkey’s could be used handsfree with his iPhone.

Do either the Rexton Adores or the Starkey’s use MFi for phone call handsfree? If they don’t have MFi support, they’re using standard BT HF and would be using the HA mics, and then the loud background sounds would make sense. However, if they do support MFi then I agree with you, strange.

I don’t claim any special knowledge, but for the last couple years on the forum the gold standard that most people wanted was a hands free phone that would use the hearing aid mics. Phonak first came out with the Audeo B Direct, but it had a fair amount of compromises. Then the Marvels and an updated Marvel 2.0. As far as I know, Phonak is the only one that claims hands free without an auxillary device. I’d agree that it would be a nice upgrade if they found a way to use the phone mic as an option in very noisy situations.

The only one doing what “this way”? You mean not supporting MFi? Not even sure if I’m correct about that, except that there were no Phonak models on Apple’s MFi support page of HA’s.

As to why Phonak doesn’t support MFi, I dunno. Swiss arrogance?

The Oticon Opn’s have handsfree without an auxillary device when using iPhone, but need the streamer when using Android.

Costco clinics generally only receive software updates as required as opposed to when they are released and available

As the KS 9.0 is their latest product and is supported by 6.0.2 they don’t need 6.1.

They’ll get 6.1 if and when the next product line is released.

Al

@haggis said:

HA’s

The main reasons are:

1. the royalties to Apple (and now Google) are expensive
2. they don’t have to share user data with any other tech companies
3. return on investment is better
4. they are being risk averse. Having Bluetooth classic means they can’t get screwed over by a phone manufacturer (like they did with their click and talk accessory with Sony Ericsson) or if for some reason iPhones lose popularity (like blackberry or Nokia) they can transition to the new market leader as it will likely still support Bluetooth classic.
5. it circumvents the Android fragmentation problem.

Yes the own voice pickup limitation is there however they are probably years ahead of everyone now in connectivity, especially as their competition is basically now forced to adopt ASHA which will be a mess. I’m curious to see which phone manufacturers choose to incorporate ASHA into their skins of Android!

@bigaltavista said:

the royalties to Apple (and now Google) are expensive

Not the Apple bit but the Google bit…

I thought ASHA was open-source. ReSound has declared that any other HA OEM is free to use ASHA and hopes that they do. I thought “open-source” meant “royalty-free?”

In the same way that Android itself is open-source. Phone OEM’s do not have to pay Google a fee for each copy of Android put on each phone, unlike for instance Microsoft, which continued its tradition with phones of charging a license fee for each copy of Windows Mobile put on a phone back in the early 2000’s, etc.

I suspect there is some disagreement with what we mean by handsfree. What I mean by handsfree is being able to receive a call with the phone in a pants pocket and answer it without touching the phone and be able to hold a conversation using different microphones than what the phone uses. Pretty sure Oticion Opn cannot do that, although they are handsfree with the ConnectClip.