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Phonak Marvel M90 compatibility with iOS 13.3.1

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My phone is automatically updating to iOS 13.3.1 tonight. Have there been any issues with the Phonak Marvel M90 and the new update?

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I haven’t had any issues, but then, I’ve not had issues with iOS 13 from the beginning. I think the problems people report might be related to a specific cell phone. I have an iPhone 7.

I believe the issues hearing aid users responded to when IOS 13 was released had to do with “Made for iPhone” () hearing aids. Apple in its wisdom decided to send notification sounds such as emails, texts messages, weather alerts etc. directly to the MFi aids rather than to the iPhone speaker starting with IOS 13. Unfortunately they failed to consider that, to conserve battery life on the aids, the bluetooth connection is usually in some kind of standby or sleep mode when no sound is streaming. It took my Oticon Opn1s around 5 seconds to activate the connection, then the notification would play, and then the connection would go to sleep again. Unfortunately that dramatically reduced the aids response to external sounds for around 10 seconds whenever some event would happen which could be hazardous if you were walking through a parking lot listening for approaching vehicles. Many people must have complained because in IOS 13.01 or .02 they stopped doing that and let notifications continue to sound through the phone.

The Phonak Marvel M90 is not MFI, so none of that applies, but I think the above is the source of the IOS 13.xx chatter among users.

FYI, I use an iPhone (8 plus) and just completed a trial of the Marvel M90s. The notifications all came through the HAs. If I end up keeping them, I will certainly have to find some less intense notification sounds since the ones I use now blow my brains out when a notification happens. The M90s still reduce outside sounds for quite a while before and following a notification which I hate. Even a single “ding” requires the the entire bluetooth wakeup and re-sleep event.

Thank you for that information. I have the Oticon OPN1 aids and I do not want the notifications coming to my hearing aids. But I do want them coming to the phone. I will keep this in mind as I am looking for new hearing aids this summer.

Any of the will follow Apples protocol of sending notifications to the iPhone, unless, of course, Apple changes their mind again in a future IOS version.

FYI, I have not been happy with the OPn1 aids for the past 3 years even with many refittings with qualified audiologists at a hospital hearing clinic and have been trialing the Phonak Marvel M90s and the Widex Evoke Fusion 2 440s for about 6 weeks. Both are far superior for me for hearing speech in noisy environments than the OPn1s, in fact better than I expected was possible. I am strongly leaning toward the Widex Evoke Fusion 2 440s which are MFi so don’t get notifications from the iPhone.

The main reason for preferring the Widex is the noticeably more natural sound. I forget I’m wearing them and feel almost like I have naturally good hearing. The Phonaks are very effective, but voices seem to me to have a slightly electronic, processed sound. Note that the Widex Evoke Fusion 2 is MFi but some other Widex models are not. With MFI aids you can access the controls directly from the IOS accessibility settings, no app needed and you can use the iPhone as a remote mic in a restaurant, meeting or similar situation. Phonak does not provide remote listen capability in its app, probably to force you to purchase one of their outrageously priced Roger remote mics.

My Audi and I have my OPN1 great for my hearing, I understand speech, and music much better than with any other hearing aids that I have ever had. The only problem I am having is that my aids are being pushed to the edge of feedback, not due to not having enough power but because of the vent size, and what may be a leak in the fit of my hearing aids. I have found out that the has a policy of prescribing the hearing aids to be comfortable and not so much for maximizing speech understanding. I am not worried about the so called comfort and want the speech understanding. My Audi and I came to the same conclusion at my annual hearing test appointment that my aids cannot be pushed to my full target prescription, and he told me we would wait until June and order new hearing aids, and my aids now will become my backup hearing aids. I love ITE hearing aids, they just suit me the best due to my lifestyle and activities. I still ride a motorcycle, and I hike a lot. I am taking advantage of my retirement and my good health as long as I can get it to last. I really would like to have the Oticon OPNS1 hearing aids but they do not make them in ITE aids yet. I am thinking about getting the OPNS1 Minirite aids anyway and just use my ITE aids when I go riding and hiking.

In reply to @CarlK

My Audi and I had about 10 appointments in the first 9 or 10 months that I had my hearing aids. I would email him what I was hearing, and what I liked and disliked, and what I would like to have. I would make sure he had the email at least a week before the appointment, so he could research the software for the needed adjustments, and if needed he would call Oticon for help. He even admitted to me that I was the first one to push him to learn the software so much more. It has paid off and I do understand speech so much better, but feel I could still see so improvements. My aids are to the point that I do not notice road noise at all, and I can go into almost any noisy restaurant and hear better than most with normal hearing. But I suffer from this setup by not hearing a lot of background noise that I would love to hear like the sounds of nature, and in someways the sounds that my car makes that has always in the past helped me troubleshoot an issues with the car. I am willing to accept these issues to be able to understand speech. But think once I get new aids that I can have set to the max for speech understanding I will ask my Audi to back these aids off so I can use time and to enjoy nature while I am hiking.

FYI, the Widex Evokes have a music mode which seems to give you wide bandwidth with minimal messing around with processing. It could be ideal for those nature situations. I tried it once in a noisy restaurant. Could hear every dish clink, forks rubbing plates, french fries bubbling etc!! I don’t know if they have an model. The version can switch mode with the pushbutton to avoid the need take out your phone in the wild. Also, the Widex Universal mode switches processing automatically based on analyzing the sound environment. In a quiet setting, everything sounds very natural with no suppression. This capability seems to work well with no need for the audi to back off processing that could help in tough situations yet still have natural sound when appropriate.

Nothing is off the table at this time. But I have been told by serveral people, and a couple of Audis that once I get use to and like the OPN sound it is very hard to switch to something else, and I love the sound of my aids.

In reply to @CarlK

Ok, that makes sense, many of the problems could well be with . As for notifications, I have them all turned off except for text messages and phone calls. I get very few of each, so the odd notification isn’t a bother. You are correct, however, that, when a notification does come in, the other sounds are muted for a bit.

The issue is not the it is the way Apple implements the MFI and notifications. There have been two camps of people the ones that want the notifications to stream to the hearing aids and the ones like me that only wants the ringtones and calls to my hearing aids. It seems that the ones of us tht do not want the notification won out this time. The real solution is a way to have it either way by settings in the iPhone settings. And hopefully they will figure this out. Also bluetooth does things differently than MFI.

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