Apple just released iOS 16.4

Sad news. I updated my iPhone SE (2020) to iOS 16.4 and then turned on Live Listening for my Widex Moment hearing aids.
When I brought up the Control Center screen on my iPhone the “Mic Mode” icon was not there. This means that the iPhone microphone cannot be configured to Voice Isolation for Live Listening.
I confirmed that Mic Mode is available int the Control Center screen for ordinary voice phone calls.

I haven’t checked out HA features yet, but my iPhone has two problems after the iOS 16.4 update. One is that the State Farm Drive Safe & Save app, which depends on my iPhone connecting to a Bluetooth beacon in my car, isn’t registering my drives. Instead, my wife, more than 13 miles away at the time, got credit for all three drives I took today (rated 100% safe driving by the app reading iPhone motion, acceleration data, checking speed limits, etc.). I want my brownie points back!

The second problem is that all my several accounts were properly set up on my iPhone for many previous iOS versions. Now after the 16.4 update, iOS 16.4 is claiming that I need to provide a password for a personal Microsoft account to access an iCloud account on my iPhone. Why suddenly this with the 16.4 update, unless Apple is patching some previous security loophole?!

I have had a problem with one or both of my ReSound Omnias losing connection in MFi hearing devices and in the ReSound app about once a day which I first noticed after the upgrade to iOS 16.3.1. Folks with other MFi HA’s like Oticon have reported similar problems with their HA’s and the iPhone in iOS 16.3.x. In my case, I usually have to reboot the affected HA, which is usually working perfectly, aside from having lost its MFi connection to my iPhone. I haven’t been running iOS 16.4 long enough to say whether it’s the cure to that annoying, occasional problem. The problem is strange in that when the MFi connection is lost, I can still change programs via the MFi settings, but I can’t change the external mic volume. Perhaps that’s because if one HA is still connected, it relays the requested program change to the disconnected HA in the other ear to make sure both HA’s are operating on the same page.

@mdboy said:

If I so much as switch to another app from MyPhonak I lose the BT LE services and MyPhonak disconnects.

Pretty sure that’s normal for myPhonak?

Upon updating to iOS to 16.4, make sure you reboot the iPhone. Hope everything is in order.

I’d never really thought that was possible. But I guess you are right given how LE Bluetooth works. I guess MyPhonak is like a remote control that must stay in the foreground at all times?

But the part that still doesn’t make sense is having to (much of the time) start the two LE services in the iOS BT setting manually when the MyPhonak app can’t start them. When MyPhonak can’t launch the BT services, It normally takes me 9 seconds to start each of the two services and then another 5 seconds to start MyPhonak which recognizes the services and connects. Is this your experience as well?

Thanks very much for your insight.

I don’t have any issues.
I updated to iOS 16.4 this morning.

I saw my audiologist about 2 weeks ago for HA setup review. I asked if there was a hearing aid operating system update. He said that my Phonaks were up to date. For what it’s worth, "Bluetooth Connection–setting is “normal sound quality”, no enhanced sound quality.
Phone is a corporate phone, managed. It’s an iPhone SE.

DaveL
Toronto

Thanks very much. This approach appears to work way better than opening the Phonak app and hoping the devices start or starting the services manually. Clearly I’ve been missing the simple and correct approach as usual .

iOS 16.4 did not fix my issue with Oticon More: from time to time the only way to switch from iPhone to iPad (and the other way around) is restarting the device I am moving the connection to. It is more frequent when I switch from iPhone to Ipad (say 80%) than iPad to iPhone. Does anyone else have this problem? Does anyone know how to fix this?

I had the impression that this wasn’t a big deal back on firmware 1.3.0, was it?

I can make it work sometimes but I still have a lot of issues with it. If you go into settings in IOS to the hearing devices and set audio routing to always hearing devices it does work for me most of the time when I am wanting to listen to audiobooks, podcasts or music. But the down side can be that one iOS device can force the change over to the other when notifications or a call comes in.

I don’t know how this happened…

• I turned my HA’s on this morning; I have to select Automatic. That’s how my Audi set me up I did that.

• Went to the dentist; took my hearing aids out and put them in the little Phonak case. I didn’t have time/didn’t turn them off.

• Finished at the Dentist; put my Paradise P90’s in, and turned on the App. Found I was in “Calm Situation” which is configured with changes for understanding speakers wearing masks.

• Selected “automatic”.

I have no idea how or why the hearing aids changed to the Calm program. I’ll start watching more carefully.

I upgraded my Telephone iOS to the latest this morning.

DaveL

I think I managed to make this transition between iphone and ipad more reliable. “Control nearby devices” and “audio handoff” now is toggled on in both devices. It was off in my ipad because something I read back in the time I had problems with firmware 1.4.0