Oticon Intent 1 Short 2-week Trial

@DaveL said:

does anyone use their myPhonak for remote care?

Um. Er. I had no idea it was even an option with myPhonak! I have never been able to make use of the phone app cuz I have been forced to own & use two (redundant) pairs of rechargeable Phonak Lumity Life aids - just to get through a simple 24-hr period.

O’course y’all know by now that even tho Phonak didn’t come out with a battery-operated aid till this year, when i got my aids 2 yrs ago, it was only rechargeables for the latest release. And the myPhonak app (oddly?!) would only allow one pair of hearing aids to be controlled by the app. Not TWO pairs as with the Roger ON iN - well, that is if you BUY the two sets of licenses at $2 grand each. Then you can control more than one pair of aids with one of your two (redundant) Roger ON iNs.

That was one thing that intrigued me about the Oticon Intent 1: RemoteCare. If it really worked for adjusting and setting up programs and settings, it would be amazing.

After my failed Oticon Trial, I even pinged my previous audi (located across the country) to ask if he’d be interested in being my “RemoteCare” contact after selling and setting up a pair of Oticon Intents for me. Um. NOPE. He said the pandemic taught him that altho patients may LOVE the idea of remote care, audis like him feel that nothing can replace face-to-face time.

@Volusiano said:

Sometimes, less is more. What matters to the end user is to prove that the hearing aids work and work well. It just muddles the water too much and can even be detrimental to arm the users with an excess amount of unnecessary information, like what kind of environment the hearing aid thinks it is in. What if the users don’t agree with the Oticon determination of what kind of environment it is, simply because the users don’t have enough insight into the logics and calculations that go into this determination that might explain and justify it? There are just more landmines that can do more harm than good to share this kind of detailed information unnecessarily.

I am the last person who wants to be burdened with technical stuff I don’t understand, but the fact that the Oticon Intents I trialed were horrific with the BT on my Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 phone just plain BUGGED ME. Then I stumbled across this loooooong article on the implications of Auracast3, and in the back of my mind I wondered if the Oticons’ LE Audio was somehow tangled in a web of Auracast-enabled stuff in my house or even neighborhood?

Could that have explained the ceaseless and endless dis-connections of these aids on my phone? I wonder if Auracast is going to be yet another complexity that users of hearing aids + cell phones will have to contend with. What if the aids think we want to connect to some kind of public audio feed and then interrupt the BT connection with our phone calls to grab that signal?

I’m absolutely positive my audiologist would have ZERO answer. The unknown possibilities of Auracast would make me shy away from any future aids that are Auracast-enabled. If you or anyone here has any simple explanation, I’d be very grateful.

@1Bluejay said:

I wondered if the Oticons’ LE Audio was somehow tangled in a web of Auracast-enabled stuff in my house or even neighborhood?

Do you have a bunch of Auracast-enabled stuff in your home. Not likely unless you’re a tech junkie.

@1Bluejay said:

I wonder if Auracast is going to be yet another complexity that users of hearing aids + cell phones will have to contend

Says someone who managed to make sense of Roger licensing. Samsung phones seem to have issues with LE Audio right now. It’s new technology. I don’t know, but I think the bugs will be ironed out over time. I still want to at least try it!

I wouldn’t be too quick to blame BT LE Audio and Auracast for your BT connection woes. I have no idea what kind of wireless connection protocol your Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 phone supports. Are you sure that your phone has BT LE Audio compatibility? If not, then it’s possible that the Intent is connecting to your phone via ASHA, because you didn’t mention the need to use the Oticon ConnectClip to connect between the Intent and the phone via standard (legacy) BT.

I’ve heard that Android phones with ASHA compatibility are spotty in terms of providing reliable ASHA connection with ASHA compatible hearing aids. That’s usually because the ASHA support between different phone brands and models is still flaky and inconsistent. Some ASHA Android phones work well with certain ASHA hearing aids, others not quite well, depending on the ASHA implementation on each phone, which may not be 100% in sync.

Unfortunately, ASHA was originally intended as a solution to connect between Android phones and HAs without using an intermediary streaming device like the ConnectClip. However, it seems like it is short-lived, and before it has a chance to work out all the kinks and bugs, it’s now being phased out in favor of BT LE Audio. This ironically makes it even plausible that many Android phone makers might have decided not to spend the effort no improving and stabilizing their ASHA support anymore, because they now want to focus on providing support for BT LE Audio and stabilizing it instead, since ASHA no longer has a viable long term future use anymore anyway.

If you want more reliable wireless BT connection for now, and the ASHA or even BT LE Audio is flaky between the Intent and your phone, I would recommend settling for using the ConnectClip to connect via standard (legacy) BT for now, because it’s been around for a long time and all the bugs have been worked out between them. Even the More and Real (predecessors of the Intent) have had a lot of troubles with using the ConnectClip with standard BT devices, and it took Oticon a long time to figure out and fix all the bugs. But at least for now, the latest firmware updates for the Real and the More (and hopefully also implemented on the Intent) have rendered the ConnectClip connection with standard BT devices more reliable now.

I wouldn’t discount the BT LE Audio feature that will be AuraCast ready with a new firmware update on the Intent a liability. Instead, it should be one of the key reasons that would justify an upgrade to the Intent, because the BT LE Audio enables the Intent to be future proof in terms of wireless connection. But like all brand new protocols, it takes time to flush out all the bugs before it becomes reliable. So in the mean time, to get the reliability you need for wireless connection, fall back on a proven standard for it, the standard legacy BT and use devices like the ConnectClip that support that standard.

@WhiteHat said:

Did you ever figure out what was interfering with your tv watching?

If I do recall, it was her ( @1Bluejay ) neighbour’s boat radio equipment that created the interference, I could be wong.

@d_Wooluf said:

Samsung phones seem to have issues with LE Audio right now. It’s new technology. I don’t know, but I think the bugs will be ironed out over time.

I SURE HOPE SO!!

And yes, we are a house FULL of techie junk. We are converting all our home automation stuff from Crestron (industrial strength) to Savant (user-friendly, app on phone). So maybe the Oticon’s LE Audio was getting tangled in the web here?

It’s simply way over my head.

GEEZ! Then things are gonna get a lot more exciting for all of us who rely on solid BT connectivity with our aids. We have so much hifi and home automation clutter here it fills a “Wizard’s closet”. There’s a guy here working on it right now - rewiring and replacing the old stuff that got fried with a lightning strike last summer.

If our appliances add to the heap o’ issues, it’s concerning.

NO. In fact after just 3 days of my 2-week Oticon trial I threw in the towel. I could NEVER get BT to stablize on the phone. Was going thru yada yada of “forget device”, re-pair, re-connect, turn LE ON, hey that didn’t work, turn it OFF, now aid shows “disconnected”, let’s do it all over again like I have nothing else to do all day, and REPEAT 4 MORE TIMES just to make a call.

(post deleted by author)

It wasn’t a fair test cuz the Oticons were set up in a crazy RUSH as a FREE trial. I didn’t think the audi had invested a lot of time and concern to make the test a success. I liked that the Oticons REMOVED a lot of ambient sound around me, but speech was actually significantly more difficult for me to comprehend than with my Phonaks. I have an Android phone, so iPhone would be of no help to me.

If you scroll WAY WAY above, you’ll nee the side-by-side Pros and Cons of Phonak vs Oticon. In addition to the BT instability, I have to say that Oticon also has no battery version of the Intent. I simply NEED batteries in order to take long trips and go places where there is either spotty power or even NO power (think: camping!). I feel tethered and constrained with rechargeables and the redundancy they have caused in my life cuz most rechargeable aids simply DO NOT provide even 24 hours of use in between charges.

Do you think a busy executive like the Pres of Phonak would like to rely on a critical medical device that only gives him 17 hrs of use per day - no matter if he’s flying to a conference, delivering a keynote speech, enjoying a week of trekking in the hills or what-all? Yeah. He’d be like ME. Finding a pair of aids that only need a battery and last many DAYS before they need changing.

Or maybe he’s a couch potato who’s awake 14 hrs a day, hates to camp, never travels abroad, and doesn’t want a landfill full of batteries.

@1Bluejay said:

Does anyone out there know if Oticon still has “AutoPhone” which was like Phonak’s “Acoustic Phone”? I really think I need that stereophonic capability to use now and then. I don’t process speech very well with just ONE ear if I have to hold up a phone with NO Bluetooth streaming.

Sorry I’m so late to this thread. I’m very interested if Intent has ‘Duophone’ capability as well. Might it be possible by setting up their ‘Autophone’ function as a selectable program?

Some background…
I have unilateral hearing loss (right side), and I currently use Phonak’s Duophone function to simulate BiCROS hearing aids. This setup still sends some signal to my bad ear stimulating the nerves etc. But more importantly it sends the audio from my bad side over to my good side to overcome the head shadow effect.

It’s not perfect, but I’m not ready to totally give up on my bad ear yet, which I would be doing if I opted for true Bi-CROS aids.

So I’m interested in trying Oticon Intents… but only if they have something similar to Duophone.

Would love to hear from anyone with insight on whether Oticon’s Autophone is similar to Phonak’s Duophone and if it can be set up as a selectable program?

I may have misspoken…
The Phonak program I’m currently using to get the fake Bi-CROS setup is Acoustic Phone. Don’t know if that’s the same as Duophone, or if they work together somehow?

So i guess I’m wondering if Oticon’s AutoPhone is similar to Phonak’s Acoustic Phone feature?

@Turnitup said:

Acoustic Phone. Don’t know if that’s the same as Duophone, or if they work together somehow?

I believe WhiteHat explains it here at this thread.

I can tell you that my Phonak Lumity Life aids all (4 pairs!) and older Phonak Marvels have “Accoustic Phone” in the dedicated programs lineup.

Other info sites describe Duophone as working exactly like my Accoustic Phone, hence the confusion. Main thing is: we have a need for some program (call it what you will!) that does not rely on BT to stream audio on a phone to both ears stereophonically.

What I don’t know is whether Oticon aids have such a feature.

Thanks for your reply (and are you a Jays fan?
Yes I find Acoustic Phone invaluable as someone with profound hearing loss on one side.
So much so that I won’t try/buy a competitor (or other phonak product) that doesn’t have the feature.