Skip to content
HearingTracker
Log in

Phonak Sphere battery charging

This topic is closed.

12 replies1.3k viewsLast reply

Link to this topic
Edited

I’m pushing my luck with 7+ year old Oticon OPNs, and am thinking about making the jump to Phonak Spheres. Have been holding out for replaceable-battery Intents, but that doesn’t seem to be imminent. I’m impressed by what I’ve been reading here about Spheres.

I have severe-profound cookie-bite loss. My great fear is dead batteries – without my , I’m pretty much deaf. And so I am wondering about worst-case scenarios with the Spheres.

I can imagine long days (16-17 hours) with a few hours streaming. Maybe a conference situation: noisy restaurant lunch, presentatations, a noisy reception/dinner that could go 4+ hours, and then getting home or to a hotel afterward. So – conceivably long periods of the Spheric mode speech-in-noise program. And I know that’s a battery eater. I’ve heard that severe loss is also a drain on batteries, though I don’t know if that applies to Spheres.

So what might be the work-around? Is it possible to charge one HA at a time, so I would retain some function? How long does it take to get enough juice to get through a few more hours?

And other than looking at the app, do you get any warnings on batt level? Phone apps are OK – but I know a lot of people feel they seem rude if they whip out their phones to check or adjust apps while they’re at, say, a dinner table or a meeting.

9 people in this conversation6 min readJump to latest

Have you considered such as the Phonak Naida? You can get them in disposable battery. Naida may be available next year with Infinio platform, but they are available now with Lumity, and reviewed quite fairly positively by folks here.

Hope this helps.

WH

It does matter how the hearing aids are used, but the Phonak Sphere lasts for over 36 hours for me. So far I’ve never had less than 50% in a day. The new uses a lot less battery than the old one, the only problem would be the Spheric, this needs to be tested, if you’re too worried you can turn it off and select it as a second program. All I can say is that the Spherics aren’t used as often as you may think.

Yesterday I stopped the time and it charged from 57% to 97% in 48 minutes.

Along the lines of White Hat’s suggestion, could you ever afford TWO pairs of aids? Wear the Spheres as your go-to, but keep the Naida’s as backups IN CASE one of your rechargeables goes down.

I honestly don’t see any benefit at all to charging just ONE aid cuz the minute you take that one out, it will LOSE CONNECTION with the other aid you still have in your ear.

I have moderately severe to borderline profound hearing loss. I’ve used my Spheres for 13 1/2 hours today, including 4 hours in noisy environments and 2 3/4 hours streaming. My ’s are at 53%. The charger is small and could easily fit in a pocket. It has enough charge to completely recharge the HA’s twice. You can charge one HA at a time if you wish. I don’t know if it’s necessary, but I would turn off the HA being charged so it fills faster.

Sorry if I’ve missed it anywhere on the forum, but is there any way to use the charger just as a carrying case without having the charge when they’re in it? With my ReSound Quattros, I could put them in the central bay normally used for the receivers so the bodies wouldn’t be in the charging docks and charge. I don’t want to charge to 100% to preserve long-term battery lifespan for the most years. Sounds like there is not enough room in the Sphere GoCharger bay to do that, so perhaps I’ll invest in a separate little carrying case (or use my Omnia case, which is nicely designed for carrying my disposable battery-powered Omnias about).

I get it…I’ve been in the no-how, no-way camp when it came to rechargeables. But I really need to get smart about upgrading before my antique Oticons give up the ghost. I’ve been holding out for disposable battery Intents.

Because I don’t upgrade that often, I also feel I should go with the best tech available. I’m kinda jazzed by what I’ve been hearing about Phonak Spheres. I’m trying to figure out how I might be able to get through a long high-demand day.

Bluejay seems to say that I couldn’t charge them one at a time, but Silver seems to say that it’s doable.

If it is doable, how much charge could I expect to get from, say a 15-minute recharge?

I’m very grateful for all your help and comments! I’ve been so long in the anti-rechargeable camp that I’m having trouble imagining life on the other side and knowing if it’s feasible with my degree of loss.

Sphere charging from 57% to 97% in 48 minutes. The Oticon Intent charges in 15 minutes and lasts for another 8 hours, and in my case they were fully charged after 1 hour.

Well, I’m rather disappointed with the Sphere, I never had the situation that was presented. If someone comes to Sphere from old hearing aids they’ll be astonished, of course, but they’ll be astonished with other devices too.

I was at an amusement park yesterday and today and the Sphere was in Spherics mode for practically the whole 3 hours for nothing because I was alone in the queue or, if I was there, wasn’t talking to anyone.

So it was at 28/34% in 12 hours (8 hours in noise) and I didn’t have automatic Spherics for dinner, exactly when I needed them. Of course I had a second program with just Spherics, with which it would have worked for another 2.5 hours, without those 10-12 hours. So the running time would be enough, but you really have to be careful how often you’re in noise and maybe increase the sensitivity or turn Spherics off completely. Because normally I have over 50% after 16 hours.

I wore the Oticon Intent 2 on the second day and after 13 hours they still had 51/53%, which is enough for another 11 hours. Personally, I like the Oticon better than the Phonak. To be fair, the Intent 2 is better adjusted than the Sphere, which may still have potential.

@Misterref78 said:

Sphere charging from 57% to 97% in 48 minutes. The Oticon Intent charges in 15 minutes and lasts for another 8 hours, and in my case they were fully charged after 1 hour.

@Misterref78 said:

I was at an amusement park yesterday and today and the Sphere was in Spherics mode for practically the whole 3 hours for nothing because I was alone in the queue or, if I was there, wasn’t talking to anyone

There is a big deal these days on how fast anything can charge, but in general, Li-on batteries will have a longer lifespan if they’re charged slower. IIRC, it’s both because of applied voltage and heat buildup during charging. Presumably, Oticon designed Intent charging to go along with the warranty period, so maybe it’s a What Me Worry situation. But I wouldn’t want to be in a race to the bottom on charging rate. Of all things, that would be close to the bottom of the list as to why I might buy (or perhaps avoid, for too fast a rate) a particular .

I’ve only trialed Phonak Lumitys for a short few weeks, but, IIRC, you can turn off Autosense in the MyPhonak app and probably thereby avoid going into Spheric speech in Loud Noise or whatever the setting is called. I also thought that unless the Spheres detect speech, Spheric noise reduction shouldn’t turn on. So maybe your audi didn’t properly adjust your settings? @JordanK hasn’t reported any such problem, AFAIK.

Phonak Sphere is not for you due to your level of hearing loss. Sphere is for basically mild to mid level hearing low. You basically got two choices. Oticon or Phonak power aids. Good luck

In reply to @jim_lewis

Well JoranK was not in a queue with a lot of people the whole time, before I also hadn’t a problem with spherics and the running time.
The problem is simple, when you are in a loud place for more than 3h then you might have a problem if you don’t have a separate program.
And yes you need to take it out from autosense but this makes not a big sense for me as it will do a good job in normal situation.

Related discussions