Phonak Audéo Sphere

It’s a fatal flaw and a disappointment for “medical equipment”.

Since the setup is the most important part it’s important to find a good vendor. I didn’t.

I did move to a wonderful business after watching interviews on a Hamilton television station. Oh well, it worked for me.

Phonak can definitely find a solution if they want to. After all, they eventually came out with a disposable version of their Lumity hearing aid series, namely the Audéo L 312.

My guess is that you will never get any of these advanced AI noise reduction and Autosense 6.0 features with a disposable battery hearing aid. The new dual combo of a dedicated AI chip + sound processor will require too much power. That appears to be the reason they have split the line into the top tech Sphere model and then the regular Infinio models. The larger size of the Sphere model is a good indicator that more battery was needed.

JordanK.

Battery life may be limited by processing power requirements. The good news is with LE Audio for streaming phone calls and media between phone and HAs, streaming extensively shouldn’t cause as much of a further battery hit as it did previously with Phonak’s “improved” version of classic Bluetooth in the Lumitys and before.

@gsl said:

Phonak can definitely find a solution if they want to. After all, they eventually came out with a disposable version of their Lumity hearing aid series, namely the Audéo L 312.

However, features such as Motion Sensor don’t work…

I’ve been very vocal about rechargeable batteries.

My Phonak Audeo Paradise P90R’s have rechargeable batteries that didn’t work well for me.

I just spent a week using my Phonak Bolero B70 hearing aids. My P90’s were away being checked. Phonak were magnificent replacing both my hearing aids and my battery charger. Salute Phonak!

My dispensing audi never honoured my request to have them checked. They were almost 3 years old.

I’ll check how the new ones work. I’ve only charged them the last 4 days or so. Lesson learned…if the seller doesnt work out, I need to move on faster.

@JordanK thanks for your posts! I’m a convert for hearing aids with rechargeable batteries.

@WhiteHat said:

This brings to mind the accelerometer issue in previous platforms. Drop rechargeable batteries and lose the accelerometer.

As I point out whenever this comes up, accelerometers that work on zinc-air voltage are listed, and their current draw is negligible even by hearing aid standards.

Ok, but by the Lumity, they also said no, no disposable battery was possible. In the end, they did it (albeit with some features missing). Apparently, they realized the customer is king! Phonak knows that listening to customers is the best way to innovate!

I think Phonak has decided it will continue to support disposable battery customers but these hearing aids will be dummied down to fit within the power envelope of disposable batteries. Basically means you won’t get any of the advanced features that require higher power (i.e. AI Noise Reduction and anything else the AI chip is doing, etc).

Jordan

@x475aws said:

As I point out whenever this comes up, accelerometers that work on zinc-air voltage are listed

But never used by them, I wonder what else could hinder this…size maybe.

@JordanK said:

but these hearing aids will be dummied down to fit within the power envelope of disposable batteries

Here we go, rechargeable are better “smarter” but it’s only 16 hours run time, can’t understand that, should be a little more incase one does a bit of streaming throughout the day.

@JordanK said:

Basically means you won’t get any of the advanced features that require higher power (i.e. AI Noise Reduction and anything else the AI chip is doing, etc).

I don’t think so, the new platform is all about AI, DNN etc ( maybe more artificial then intelligent at this time)

@JordanK said:

Tons of info to digest here after watching Matthew’s new video. 10 db improvement for speech in noise is huge and so is Bluetooth LE Audio

He mentions Auracast ready maybe coming with a firmware update at some point, 10dB in the Lab, it’s always hard to get this right in real world situations tho, if you look at the SNR on Roger products it’s pretty amazing really.

What we really want to see is getting them sold at Costco! like $1500 a set would be a good starting point.

When the competition is putting out HAs that last for over a day (with streaming) on one single charge, Phonak’s 16 hours is problematic to say the least, no matter how great their signal processing is.

@tenkan said:

But never used by them, I wonder what else could hinder this…size maybe.

Someone said a few months ago that a chip with accelerometer and other functions is used in common by multiple manufacturers. That’s a rechargeable-voltage chip, because the customers who buy it want it that way. But I’m not aware of any reason why it couldn’t be made to run on lower voltage.

The spec sheets actually show 18 hours, not 16 of expected operating time but that is a minor difference compared to some of the other makes. While the Audio I-R comes in all four technology levels, the Sphere comes in only two, the 90 and the 70. The only difference I see between the two is that the 90 has speech enhancer while the 70 does not. I am not sure what that feature does. The other thing that confuses me is that the frequency range of the UP receiver <100 Hz -8,000 Hz is wider than the P receiver <100 Hz- 7,500 Hz which seems counter intuitive.