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Dear Phonak, your Lumity battery isn't good enough

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In reply to @x475aws

I think it’s easy to think that we are “typical” hearing aid buyers. We’re not. We’re hearing aid geeks. We get into stuff the average person really doesn’t care about.

In reply to @MDB

@MDB said:

offers connectivity to non phone devices like computers

yes, you are right! they connect to any shitty bluetooth BUT how does it help me if my battery will die very quickly?
for instance, i am having meetings daily, not just a fad :slight_smile:

In reply to @JordanK

@JordanK said:

The other brands use Apple’s MFI low power Bluetooth. That’s why their rechargeable hearing aids last longer. Phonak uses Bluetooth Classic which uses more power but provides a stronger signal with a more reliable connection.

I didn’t know about this. I have Signia with a battery, and get excellent battery life. (rechargeable… But I only connect to my phone, so lack of connectivity isn’t an issue for me.

In reply to @billgem

@billgem said:

Odd that what you say is not my experience. I trialed Signia Pure Charge&Go AX (44 hours) and had absolutely no problem with connectivity with my android phone.

Signia uses Apple’s LEA (Low Energy Audio) protocol (known as ) to connect to iPhones and the new Android (Audio Streaming for Hearing Aids) protocol for Android phones. Both use much less power than Bluetooth Classic but IMHO, the signal strength is much lower and much more susceptible to radio interference from other devices. That is why Signia and others get closer to 36-40 hours per charge and Phonak (which uses Bluetooth Classic) seems to only last 18 hours.

The Bluetooth Classic connection between my Lumity hearing aids and my iPhone 14 Pro Max is rock solid. I almost never experience a drop off or interference from other devices. That being said, there have been a number of people with Android phones who have had issues. I’m an Apple guy so I can’t comment on that.

Phonak really has to make a choice. Either support the new Bluetooth Audio LE standard (go read the ongoing megathread on this forum about this new Bluetooth standard) that is slowly rolling out or go the Apple MFi route. I don’t think that increasing the size of the hearing aids to accommodate a larger battery is really what people want.

Jordan

In reply to @jeffrey

@jeffrey said:

I have Signia with a telecoil battery, and get excellent battery life. (rechargeable… But I only connect to my phone, so lack of connectivity isn’t an issue for me.

Bro, do you mind to msg me with some feedback (pros and cons) about the signia ?
Thanks

In reply to @billgem

@billgem said:

Phonak can release a new battery charger any time they want.

The issue isn’t the charger, the issue is the load on the batteries and their capacity. You’d have to make the bodies of the aids bigger to accommodate the load over a longer time. They made a choice about all these things. They made an engineering compromise decision. I prefer the choices I get with the connections over occasionally running out of battery when I’m 20 min from getting in bed anyways.

WH

@WhiteHat said:

You’d have to make the bodies of the aids bigger

not necessarily, for example signia doesnt use induction but galvanized charging with contacts and the battery life is between 24 to 39 H (the latter is the model with )

Edited

They (signia) don’t use classical . So the power load is lighter than Phonak’s aid. So the batteries don’t last as long or need to be bigger in phonak. No magic wand to just fix this like you suggest. Why can’t cars run forever on no gasoline and the tires never wear out? Manufacturers live in a real world and make decisions about their products that change how they perform and use energy. You may dislike it, but it is what it is until the next redesign.

WH

@WhiteHat said:

They (signia) don’t use classical BT. So the power load is lighter than Phonak’s aid

I know and I agree with you!
But I was talking about how they could make it better by at least changing the charging style, this makes room to a better battery.

In reply to @x475aws

For most manufacturers, that might be true @x475aws… The hearing aid industry is perhaps a different kettle of fish… They have IMO, little or no scruples whatsoever, hell they’ll even sell you a dumbed down version of their wares, because you are poor, and because they can… (You may say, all manufacturers do this, but other manufacturers aren’t making hearing aids for hearing impaired people, these folks need aids to survive, in a hearing world… ) These are the same hearing aids, the same software, the same R&D costs, & the same marketing, the only difference is they remove certain key aspects of the software, to make the poorer clients hear worse in certain situations, and they do this to the detriment of folks with a sensory disability… It is almost like selling someone with no legs a motorised wheelchair, and removing the power source… Perhaps the worst form of exploitation is against folks with a disability? If they had any ethics, which they apparently don’t, they would give the poorer clients a leg up… Cheers Kev :wink:

ok so they will be HIT when will release a new version with Bluetooth LE instead of classic. end of story :smiley:

In reply to @MDB

@MDB said:

We’re hearing aid geeks. We get into stuff the average person really doesn’t care about.

Such as understanding speech without being taken to the cleaners? IMO hearing better is the bread-and-butter of this forum, and the geeky stuff is at the fringes. It isn’t like, say, an audiophile forum where the average person might come looking for the best soundbar to buy from Amazon, and find discussions of surround sound systems instead. There’s no such thing as a geeky hearing aid as opposed to a mass market hearing aid, as far as I know. Some of the experienced users here just know better how to make things work for them, and sometimes for less money. So it’s worthwhile for any person to come here, and I assume they do. I don’t think the admins are keeping this site running just for the people who are actually posting.

I’m a new user, and I’m not impressed with the Phonak Slim’s battery life. They don’t last a full day. For example today i got 16 hours out of them before the right ear went dead. I streamed maybe about an hour at the most.

On a separate note, you folks rock! I’ve learned a lot from this forum, thank you.

In regards to bluetooth classic, Phonak demonstrably made a good business choice going that way. There was a substantial period of time when all the other manufacturers needed a middle man device to connect to an android phone. Apple users may be loud, but android users and the majority. We saw a HUGE shift in manufacturer sales during this time–given the choice between using a streamer and getting direct streaming, patients chose direct streaming. As direct streaming options evolve, Phonak will probably also evolve, but I’m not sure when. (I tried to spell evolv with no terminal e, thanks Starkey.) So far my connections with other manufacturers have been a bit flakey.

That all said, it’s not just the classic bluetooth determining the Phonak battery life. My non-streaming users reliably get a day out of the lumities, but they certainly wouldn’t get 40 hours like you can from other manufacturers. It’s not a battery size issue. Phonak processing just must be power-hungry? I do suspect that they rely a little bit more heavily on ear-to-ear processing than other manufacturers, and that sucks battery life too. Patients who like to sit in the narrow beam mode all the time should certainly not be getting rechargeables, as that cuts the life nearly in half.

By the way, recently my left Phonak Lumity L RT 90 started to discharge very quickly. It’s not the one that connects to other devices via Bluetooth (that being the right one) so it’s even more strange.

What I suspect is that the new regulation the audiologist did after my last hearing test could be responsible. Is that possible?
In my last hearing test, my left hear proved to have gotten worse than the right in the low frequencies, so Phonak Target adjusted to the new , and I’m guessing that the new settings consume much more power…

But, even if that’s the reason, energy consumption seems exaggerated on the left .

What do you guys think?

Could be the new settings but hard to say without seeing your loss profile. The audiologist may have also switched the connection hearing aid to the left side. You can change this in Target. Could also also be a defective battery. I would go back to the audiologist and ask.

Jordan

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