Phonak Marvel: Can Bluetooth be turned off to reduce battery drain?

If I remember correctly you have Phonak Marvel aids.
Bluetooth can not be turned off on the Marvels.
Your choice is to turn off Bluetooth on all other devices or unpair your aids from all other devices.

@Nikita said:

Airplane mode … if i turn on airplane mode will that cut roger and telecoil

Not sure, but I think so.

Phonak Audeo M90-R RIC — LiIon battery life with and without BT:

I’ve got a fair amount of experience now with my rechargeable HA and with BT. Here’s what I’ve learned that should apply somewhat to the 312 disposables. Note also, there are stock Panasonic specs that likely have the precise LiIon batteries that could be used to replace these, if your HA is out of warranty, (which might also destroy the water resistance rating.), “Factory-only repairs” are true for HA’s and for Cell phones as well. But, you’d have to be a moron to not go to a third party repair house in a few years from now if it wears out. (See note at the END of this, about LiIon longevity.)

• Recharge time from fully discharged: 2 Hours + 20 Minutes
• 24 H - > NO BT at all – (airplane mode, or I suspect it would likely be the same if unpaired) = Don’t know, but would guess close to 24 hours
• 18 H → BT active, but not connected: 18 Hours
• 12-15 H → BT active and connected, but LIGHT use… i.e. no music playing: 12-15 Hours
• 8 H → Mostly connected and playing music, but quietly: 8 Hours
• 5-6 H → Very loud constant music - Volume level can affect battery life, more than you’d think: 5 or 6 Hours

BTW, If you are listening to music with BT, follow some of my design ideas for HA’s. Here’s my rant on music, BT, Molds, occlusions, and “<100 Hz bass response”. I guess this should become a separate post:

I’ve had acrylic molds from the VA since January, Finally, someone here told me that the VA had “occlusion plugs” that I could get. It really irritated me to be told that, “HAs are 'not designed to be for music, but were made for speech”. BULL!!! They can sound great!! But, ONLY if you ADD “occluded” ear molds. However, there are some problems:

1. Staying connected to BT devices: Walk more than 20 feet away, or behind a door, and you will have intermittent connect / reconnect about every 30 seconds. When you get back and are in range again, next to the device, it will NEVER reconnect properly!! The fix / workaround is to go to the source BT device, disconnect for at least 5 seconds, and reconnect, (and hope your device doesn’t automatically attach to a different BT device automatically, instead). Irritating to fix your connection when it should / could “just work”, but doesn’t without manual work added, every time you walk out of range.

2. Using for “Communication”, (AKA, “Headset” that shows a boom mike in the icon), AND ALSO “Earphones”, with no microphone. This is mostly for Windows 10 PCs: These are classed as two different device types, BOTH are paired BT “devices”. So, let say that you are listening to music. If using “earphones”, everything will work OK. But, if you try to listen using the “headset”, you get clicking / static; not terrible, but somewhat annoying. Try to switch from music source to “Meet”, “Skype” or PC phone?? Yeah, well, if you aren’t “careful”, you’ll get to hear, but can’t talk, or you can talk, but not hear. Often, if you “test your settings”, you will get the message to “don’t use unmatched devices”. Then, you can also be using, the “default playback”, or the “default” “recording devices”. Huh?? Yes, well, the Windows device stack is hard to get right. Worse though, is turning on one device, turns off the other, and seemingly ever random combinations. Every time I think I have if figured out, Window or the application tries to outsmart me. RULE: IF you switch devices shortly before a call, and you haven’t tested BOTH the incoming sound AND the mike, it WILL NOT WORK, and you will be trying to fix it, while other frustrated users watch your supposed stupidity. When this happens, get a MANUAL headset, plug it in, and turn OFF BT. Or, turn off BT, and just use th built in speakers and mike from a laptop. Test it, but it will likely work best and fastest.

3. While using the OCCLUDED HAs, you will NOT hear most of the ambient sound or speaking around you, anymore!! The fix / workaround that works best, is to merely pull the ear molds partially out of your ear. Also keep in mind that like any occluded earphones, eating will create very loud sound, and will also tend to re-seat your earmolds. For me though, the fantastic music sound you get is well worth it. NOTE that with most of these occlusion plug add-ons, they are next to impossible to install, so you can’t just add them when you want great sound.

4. Installing these occlusion plugs have several problems, at least the ones I had been given by the VA: The hole to fill is “D” shaped, and the plugs are round cylinders. The plugs have a small hole drilled all the way through them, so if using one with a large hole, you also have to fill that hole. The cylinders are NOT tapered, so getting them to start into the hole is difficult. The “D” shaped holes are differently sized, so picking the right plugs is not easy, (but, you do get a large assortment of sizes). The plugs are the same 1/4" length that the molds are, so you can’t grip the slippery plugs, while inserting them into the “D” shaped holes. I used a special pair of tweezers, but it was still difficult.

5. You now will hear perfect bass, but only down to 100 HZ cutoff. I was shocked to see how little I cared about this fact! Your brain adjusts your perception of this missing sound, so you won’t miss it much, unless you must duplicate your ride’s “low-rider blaring bass”, that trucks from 1/2 mile around can’t miss. I listen regularly to the free Radio Paradise lossless FLAC channels1, and the sound is the best quality I’ve every heard, even when I had perfect hearing. (This also the best and largest commercial free, listener supported music station you’ll ever find, build by a DJ from the 1970’s!!)

Even with the problems, these rechargeable Phonaks with occluded molds, coupled with BT PC and phone, have done more to my quality of life, than I could have imagined. The green LED charging light quit on both sides, and so the VA has sent them out to Phonak for repair for over two weeks. Other than that, I really miss them.

Fine tuning the equalizer in my PC, for my $200 Klipsch earphones is much harder than I thought. They pale in comparison to the great sound U get from my Phonaks. Don’t believe that well designed HA’s aren’t for music. That defies common sense. Just FIX the frequency loss that you will get with ANY open HA’s without molds that include occlusion, and you will get nearly perfect sound. Oh, and all the annoying ambient sounds around you while listening?? Most all that annoyance is eliminated!!

(If you really want BOTH ambient sound and great music, you can also play with the HA gain, to increase it to max, when BT is playing. You can do that by turning the HA DOWN while listening, and then BOOSTING the source volume. I personally don’t bother, since if I want ambient speech, I just pull the HA’s out slightly, and still must mute / or decrease the source BT sound.)

LiIon LONGEVITY: There an hour video out there someplace, of the Panasonic “Field Application Engineers” teaching the Chevy engineers how to incorporate their batteries into cars. I was told today that Chevy Volt’s batteries last virtually forever, vs their competitor’s electric cars, so the advice must have been great. Here’s what I heard:

• If you charge them to 100%, the life of the battery will be 2-3 years, or maybe 100 charge / discharge cycles.
• If you only charge to 90% instead, as the MAX charge, the batteries will last virtually forever.
• Cell phone companies or car companies and other “spec chasers”, who are designing to be the “best devices with the best battery life”, generally opt to charge up to the 100% level. Their batteries will not last past 2-3 years. Even during those years, the capacity will decrease steadily.

Evidently, Chevy engineers did it right and listened, and most others, didn’t. I can only hope that most of the current cell phones that don’t have user-replaceable batteries, have designed in 90% and not 100%. Also, I hope phonak did it right. If not, there will be a great market for someone to learn how to replace these batteries, and also I would hope that Phonak would update it’s firmware to only charge to 90%.

Lol. I know. I dont have much loss. Unfortunately the little loss i do have is causing me to not understand speech in noise at all. Its about 60% word recognition in noise vs 100% no noise.