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What is the expected battery lifetime of Phonak Roger Select?

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Hi can anybody give me an idea about the life of Roger Select as they use lithium batteries. Any rough estimate as they are very costly.

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I seem to use mine for about 1 or 2 hour intervals and not every day. Charge lasts about 7 to 10 hours. So I charge mine about once a week or so. Someone else may use theirs all day every day and charge every night. Full recharge takes about 2 hours. Many 5 year old Roger pens seem to still be working fine. The batteries may or may not be replaceable by Phonak or others. My rough estimate is that by the time the select battery needs to be replaced there will be newer and better devices to get for less money. Or not.

@Psych1 said:

My rough estimate is that by the time the select battery needs to be replaced there will be newer and better devices to get for less money.

I believe this. My Pen that I got in 2013 is still going strong and I can be using it literally all day.

If you don’t need all-day use, you can get longer battery lifespan out of a Li-ion battery device by not charging it to completion. Don’t know if you can tell the relative % of charge but it’s said, for example, thatt if you don’t charge above 80%, that you can effectively double the # of charge cycles your device can go through (Lenovo and HP laptops used to offer the ability to limit charge to the % of full you specified, for example).

On a lot of my Li-ion-powered devices, since I’m around home a lot and don’t use any one device all day, I keep my charge in the range of 30% to 60%. It’s particularly easy to do with wireless charging. Put my Samsung Galaxy watch on its charging stand and just say, “Echo, set a watch charging timer to xxx min”). I don’t need to be looking at my watch every minute of the day and that charging policy helps me make a $350 watch last for many years without having to worry about daily usage progressively failing from the battery dying. Electric vehicles employ such managed charging schemes since you don’t want to be paying the $$$$ to replace your hybrid vehicle battery any time soon.

Does anyone have an idea about the life of Roger Select? Hi long does it lasts? Also does anyone tried to change its battery once it cannot hold charge anymore

Since select came out in Feb 2018 (member archive) I doubt anyone can say anything precise yet.

So you can know at this moment that they’ll work perfectly fine for at least 2.5 years :joy:

@jim_lewis unfortunately, you don’t get exact info about battery charge, it is either almost empty (red), half (orange), or full (green).
You might do some timing though.

I’m too lazy for that.

My phone battery shows significant drop after around 2 years. Only in first few months (minus first few weeks) I can go without charging the phone during the day to ensure it won’t shut down. My phone on average has 7h of screen time, ranging from 6 to 12h per day. A lot of that time it’s directly plugged in the charger, especially during video calls.

And those batteries are 3000 mAh Li-ion.

All Selects have 400 mAh Li-polymer. (all Pens have 360 mAh, also Li-po)

Seeing that I use select occasionally at the time, eg not charging every day and definitely not using it as tv connector or other streaming device to spare the micro usb and battery, I believe even if I’d need it for 8h a day and charge every night, I would expect 2 years lifetime. And if I need it that often, I hope it is for work so I have money to buy new/exchange battery.

I asked about possibility of changing battery with phonak, but I forgot exact answer, I think conclusion was that it’s possible but I don’t know the price.

Probably because no one needed it yet…

I just found this

The typical estimated life of a Lithium-Ion battery is about two to three years or 300 to 500 charge cycles, whichever occurs first. One charge cycle is a period of use from fully charged, to fully discharged, and fully recharged again.

Also it looks like it is the same for Li-Po

If you’re swivelling around 50% charge you get double cycles but, they’re not then 100% capacity but 50% of course, so to me it looks it doesn’t give much benefit since available usage time is roughly similar anyway with significant more effort.

BU-808: How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries5

BU meta description needed...

To me, it is just not worth the trouble of guesswork for select, to get hundred partial cycles more.

It’s not worth even for phone where I see the ‘exact’ numbers, I don’t want to think too much about it, have more important things to keep in mind, at home I’m just plugged in if I’m in bed or at couch or at video call.

For select he gets food when he shows red and eats until green.

@Blacky said:

My phone battery shows significant drop after around 2 years.

My battery health of my 4 year old iPhone is at 96% still.

I guess with the Select, it’s the same, some might not do as well as others.

Do you abuse yours as I do mine, that’s the question :joy:

I have usage tracking app where I had to send dev a message to increase limits :joy: they assumed no one would need more than 4h per day for a single app :joy:

I think my father can still charge his old phone (around 3+ years now) once in a two days, while mum and I tore down the same model (bought around the same month) in year and a half :joy:

So, it really depends how much you use, charge and so on. If you charge select/pen once-twice a week, and use it only as a mic, I believe they’ll last really long time.

Edited

In reply to @Blacky

@Blacky said:

@jim_lewis unfortunately, you don’t get exact info about battery charge, it is either almost empty (red), half (orange), or full (green).
You might do some timing though.

Hi, Blacky

Theoretically, for anything that charges via USB, you can use a USB digital multi-meter such as the inexpensive one that I got on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07X3HST7V/11

You let the device you want to know % charged for fully discharge. You charge it through the USB multi-meter and measure the number of milliamps it takes to fully charge (and might note the time). Then as you charge it in the future, you can note the mA and time spent charging the device to get an idea of ~ how much you’ve charged it.

What I’d like is a USB plug device that has traditional multi-meter probe terminals accessible just to read the voltage. I have two EGO li-ion batteries for an electric string trimmer. One has 5 LED lights that light in succession at >0%, >20%, >40%, >60%, >80% charge. I’ve used paper clips in the + and - charging terminals and insulated pliers(!) (the device can deliver 56 volts and several amps!) to very carefully measure the voltage when the device is charged to different levels and built a voltage discharge curve. Then stuck the same paper clips in the other EGO battery that just has an all or none LED light that’s either green (some charge) or red (discharged) to actually measured how much charge is in that battery by determining the voltage across the terminals and referring to my voltage discharge curve I built using the other battery. I’ve probably said this before on the forum but someday hopefully all battery-powered devices will at least have the 5 LED indicators - it’s so handy and, especially if you’re going to use a string trimmer, let’s you know how much useful trimming time you’ll ~get with that battery. Same goes for devices…

Jim, I think this is related to what you’re saying above, but I still don’t really grasp this. I frequently charge 18650 Lithium ion batteries for my caving headlamps. The charger will charge them to 4.20 volts. Over time, although the battery will read 4.20 volts while on the charger, if I take it off the charger and put it back on, it will read a lower voltage. Currently (pun sorta intended :grinning:) I have several that read about 4.13 volts. I’m pretty sure this is indicative of the batterry’s condition, but I don’t know what is still “decent.” Gut says if they get below 4.0 volts they’re probably minimally useful. Thanks! Oh, supposedly they are 3.70 volt batteries.

Edited

In reply to @MDB

@MDB said:

The charger will charge them to 4.20 volts. Over time, although the battery will read 4.20 volts while on the charger, if I take it off the charger and put it back on, it will read a lower voltage.

Don’t know what the right term is for it - some of the more technical folks on the forum might know - but you want the “resting voltage” of the battery, not the voltage just when you’re done charging, which will invariably be a bit higher. And as to something like a li-ion battery being “3.7 volt,” that may well be what the actual voltage of the battery will be, at least on average, when delivering current under some sort of load. You can often find a technical data sheet on the Internet with voltage discharge curves under various loads (and past posts on this forum have given examples for zinc-air and li-ion batteries, showing for example that zinc-air are extremely flat voltage curves over a range of charged states from fully charged to almost discharged. Since battery chemistry within a type, like li-ion, lead acid, etc., can vary a bit, leading to variation in the exact shape of the discharge curve (vs. applied load, too), the best thing is to find some examples for your exact type of battery and the load (or resting state) of the battery. As an example, here’s a series of voltage discharge curves under different loads for the type of Samsung Li-ion battery that is more or less in my EGO string trimmer (for any parallel battery circuit, ~14 of them in series to give the 56 v the device operates under): See the section of the page that has the heading Doing some capacity tests on the Samsung 25R5 (green) Notice with how little discharge the battery voltage drops from 4.2 to ~4v (as soon as you start going above 4 v on charging, it’s supposed to have a big effect of the long-term lifespan of a Li-ion battery-so you have to ask yourself, if that extra 0.2 v to top off the charge is really worth it?!).

Edited

In reply to @MDB

The Select is designed to last at least 5 years with “normal use”. The answer to how long the battery will last in reality is a boring one: it depends. As has been already brought up in this thread the longevity of Li-Po batteries is affected by numerous factors like operating temperatures, average voltage, number of charge cycles etc. One of the worst things you can expose a Li-Po battery to is heat and a high average voltage, so leaving it connected to the charger for several months in a cupboard with other heat sources is probably close to worst case. Another no-no is to leave it discharged for long periods which can lead to deep-discharge of the battery. There are protection circuits that will shut off the battery when the voltage gets below a certain threshold, but even the protection circuit consumes a tiny bit of current, and the battery will have a certain amount of self-discharge, so after several months the battery may be damaged beyond rescue.

Defining end of life for a battery is also difficult as it depends on your needs as a user. Let’s say that you are a heavy user that use Select for phone calls 5h/day. If we assume a capacity loss of 20% per year, the battery wouldn’t last long enough to handle 5h of use after 3 years if we assume 8h of operating time when new. But for someone only using it a couple of hours at a time for the occasional dinner with friends it might have an acceptable operating time even after 10 years.

The battery in Select can be replaced during repair.

@RogerPM thanks for confirming ability to replace battery :slight_smile:

@jim_lewis don’t you think such measurement is overkill? I mean, going through all that to get several dozen of hours more of potential lifetime, and that’s assuming that you keep it in the perfect environment during whole lifetime (eg it probably won’t matter if you carefully charge it to titer around 50% for half a year if you leave it out for hours on hot sun :joy:)

By all means, if you have time and energy to spend into such optimisations, go for it. I just think it is not generally feasible, and definitely not worth it for me.

@hold4triple said:

Life time of battery is hard to judge, since most users of the Phonak Select send the device back due to lack of performance - before battery ever runs out.

This surprises me. Everyone on this forum who has it is very very satisfied (afair), me included and I never saw someone being disappointed and returning it. (assuming the program was properly done for each person).

If I’m sure about something is how versatile and useful I find this select in. With I’m in the process of thinking it over, for various models, but select was literally love on the first sight, no doubts that I’m buying it :joy: and I haven’t changed my mind in several months I’ve owned it. I still haven’t paid it so I can change my mind.

But I guess it depends what’s your quicksin score / needed snr. I guess that for people for who aids are already sufficient, they probably would not see much effect from any mic anyway (discarding the distance, just focusing on hearing people around one table).

For me HAs alone in any noise just don’t cut it. Like relatively quiet radio and switching between two people speaking with a kid running around.

I can, but I also need a ton of effort, lip reading, concentration and whatnot. With select I stay in the loop almost effortlessly (compared to without it) and I can even look around away from the table. :joy:

Did you have bad experience then?

Edited

In reply to @Blacky

@Blacky said:

@jim_lewis don’t you think such measurement is overkill? I mean, going through all that to get several dozen of hours more of potential lifetime, and that’s assuming that you keep it in the perfect environment during whole lifetime

I’m not sure about your math, Blacky. It’s said if you don’t charge over 80%, you double the lifespan of a Li-ion battery. According to Phonak, the Roger Select lasts up to 8 hours on a full charge. Assume 300 lifetime recharge cycles. That’s 8 x 300, or 2400 total lifetime hours of use with no battery-saving measures. Just not going above 80%, you get an extra 2400 hours of use, not “a few dozen” as you claim.

But the claim for Li-ion batteries is that if you stay within the 30% to 60% charge range or so, that you can quadruple or quintuple battery lifespan. That would be up to an extra 9600 hours of use. If you stay within a 10% charge range, you can supposedly increase total usage hours by almost a factor of 10, roughly an extra 22,000 hours of use, i.e., the device’s battery ~never dies.

For a number of years now, there has been talk of wirelessly recharging devices over-the-air. Apple has supposedly been working on it for the iPhone (I can hardly wait to get exposed to all the in-air electromagnetic radiation from everyone’s OTA chargers!). If that ever comes to pass, you could have a little on-board intelligence and a Li-ion device could manage its charge status the way electric cars do right now to make the most of the lifespan of their super-expensive batteries (~$20K).

And did we talk about price? Roger Select ~ $1,000 U.S. Double the lifespan. Save $1,000. Quintuple the lifespan, save $4,000.

On the effort to save battery life doesn’t prevent you from hapless accidents. Yeah, same philosophy for cars. Always buy a junker, never a BMW or Mercedes because as soon as you hit the road, some idiot is likely to broadside you and total your $60K investment.

I totally agree if time is precious, it’s not worth the effort to maximize one’s Li-ion battery life. But if you have no pressing need for a device (I can hear well enough to get by totally without my ’s), rather just running up a bill wearing out Li-ion devices, it’s economical to get the maximum lifespan you can out of them that fits with your lifestyle, rather than just throwing away money on devices with planned obsolescence built into the battery. Particularly for poorer countries of the world, it makes sense to optimize battery lifespan. The rest of us can live as if we’re in California (gee, it seems hot and smoky around here - maybe a little more management would have helped?).

Edit_Update: BTW, as an aside to this post, relative to the question “To be or not to be?!,” since I mentioned management relative to CA in passing, the NY Times as an excellent in-depth review on where CA’s development policies and climate change have led it. I have created a Social Topic thread on the article here: https://forum.hearingtracker.com/t/ny-times-article-of-why-california-is-ground-zero-for-climate-change-disasters/54965?u=jim_lewis (member archive)

I’ll see if can get access to the NY Times article later, but a couple of points. It’s not just California that’s having a horrible fire season: Oregon and Washington are also having a bad time. Regarding forest management. It’s the US government who manages US Forests (most of the fires) and they have not been big on funding forest management. I think our fire issues are complex. Better management could help, but climate change is also having a big impact. Following a fire close to me I hadn’t realized how important humidity levels, both of the air and the fuel is to how fire behaves.

In reply to @MDB

Off topic…
Here in Texas we try to not burn unless humidity is greater than 40%, temperature below 60 F and wind is below 8 mph.
This is a A&M guideline.

@jim_lewis

BU-808: How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries

BU meta description needed...

Check table 2.

Tell me if I got it now correctly.

If I read correctly, when it says dod 100% that means full charge and full discharge. And that gives 600 cycles. Let’s assume 1 full battery gives us 10h of work for simplified calculations.

That means that you’ll get 600 cycles * 10h = 6000 working hours of that battery.

However, dod 10% means you’ll get just 10% of the battery working for you(simplified), so 1h of work, so total 15000h. Also, you should cycle between 90% of battery and 100%. Since cycle is always to the full.

So, table
Dod 10% 1h x15000 = 15000h (full battery when 90%)
Dod 20% 2h x9000 = 18000
Dod 40% 4h x3000 = 12000
Dod 60% 6h x1500 = 9000 (fill bat when reaches 40% left)
Dod 80% 8h x900 = 7200
Dod 100% 10h x600 = 6000 (fill when empty)

So this means that the best would be to fill battery to the full once it shows 80 % left.
If you do it at 40% left you’ll get 1.5 times longer life, or double life if you don’t allow your battery to go below 60%…

But when you fill the battery you should go to the full, this table is only about how low it can get.

Did i understand the numbers correctly now?

I think I’ve inverted something in my mind earlier.

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