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Windows 11 to add Bluetooth LE support for hearing aids

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Great news. Unfortunately, my Dell XPS 8930 Special Edition computer, designed in 2018 and bought by me in 2020, only has LMP 9.6 in its Qualcomm adapter! So, at some point, I will be shopping for a BT dongle and hoping ReSound enables BT LE Audio for their Omnia line.

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BTW, on October 20th, the main Hearing Tracker website published an article by Karl Strom announcing that Windows 11 would support BT LE Audio:

Windows 11 to Directly Pair with Hearing Aids with Bluetooth LE Audio (hearingtracker.com)176

Do you know whether KS 10 aids (similar to Phonak P90) include "the latest Bluetooth Low Energy Audio? If so, then this may convince me to upgrade to Windows 11.

And it may say that way, they seem intent on keeping classic bluetooth, maybe in a couple of platforms?

Nothing confirmed what I know of. However, when they launched the Oticon More hearing aids they said they would be upgraded to with future firmware updates. But when they launched the Oticon Real they didn’t mention anything about it. If they update Oticon More with LE Audio I’m pretty sure they will update Oticon Real as well.

My computer has just detected the update available for Windows 11, version 23H2, and in the description of the added features it states add Bluetooth .

In reply to @jim_lewis

IF you have spare M2 slot, you could add one of Intel’s recent Wi-Fi/Bluetooth cards. I’m guessing it will be awhile before we have dongles. Of course it will also likely to be awhile before anybody might need them! :>)

I’m using an Asus -500 that supports Low Energy. It does see and connect to my Moments, but then drops the connection. I presume they can’t negotiate a protocol. Widows has a registry entry for my Moments.

Even with the latest driver from Asus, the LPM of the BT500 is 9, and from looking through driver available for it and most other dongles (they’re all using Realtek 8671B) the LMP are up to 10 at best.

I did locate a driver update from September on the MS drivers roster but it won’t install :ok_man:

Oh well, someday!

In reply to @user715

Yes, Bluetooth is confusing. Low Energy (LE) is not the same as . Most hearing aids use LE for sending info to and from the apps. Made for iPhone and can use it for audio. As far as I know, no PC can use LE to transmit audio except for newer Macs using Made for iPhone tech and perhaps the latest Intel PCs with LE audio with Resound Nexias. I don’t think any PCs can use ASHA. Phonak sacrificed battery life for the ability to use Classic.

Love the avatar! Gonna have to get some leftover Halloween candy, on minute… dang, all the M&Ms were gone, had to settle for a Kit-Kat.

Yeah I know about the vs LE mess of acronyms.

is purely android, no luck of exploring with BlueStacks or WSL yielded results so far. Just wait for the the features to trickle down in updates for us PC users!

In reply to @user715

I think if you’re a Windows Insider in one of the advanced channels, you’ll have the firmware/driver update. But for anyone else running Windows 11 and having a capable BT device in their computer, it’s the trickle-down thing…

In reply to @user715

On the Windows 11 update screen, click on “Learn about some of the new features in the update” under Windows 11, 23H2, and you can go to a specific page on Microsoft’s website to see what’s new. I’ve already performed the update and can’t reproduce this.

Edited

Last September, I stupidly entered the Windows Inside Release Preview ring to kick the tires of Win11 22H2, thinking I’d be let out to the general release version of 22H2 when it was finalized in October 2022. Instead, I got trapped in the Release Preview Channel, where I still am “queued for unenrollment,” “when the next version of Windows releases.” That used to mean 23H2. I hope they didn’t change the meaning to Windows 12 without telling anyone. Quite a few other people are similarly trapped in the Release Preview channel.

The punchline to this shaggy-dog story is that in December 2022, Microsoft, through Windows Update, delivered a premature preview release of a Dell BIOS update to my computer (that’s a firmware update) that bricked my Dell 8930 computer. I had to jump through hoops to make it bootable again. And in the past, I have similarly received other OEM firmware updates through Windows Update.

On Learn.Microsoft.com, Microsoft even has instructions for OEMs on how to package a firmware update for delivery by Windows Update. Build and submit a firmware package to Windows Update (WU) - Windows drivers | Microsoft Learn3

The Qualcomm chip in my computer is a QCA vintage chip. It looks like the first Qualcomm chips that are said to support are Qualcomm QCC chips. So perhaps it’s like the ReSound Nexia vs. the ReSound Omnia, that older hardware just isn’t capable of supporting BT LE Audio (and the OEM would rather sell new chips!).

Edited

On my Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon version 9 with Windows 11 Pro, on my Windows update screen there is a toggle to try pre-releases or not. I did try one pre-release without thinking much about it, but toggled it off again and now it’s as it was, I get offered pre-releases, but it doesn’t install them unless I specifically tell it to.

Anyway the latest offered is the Windows 11 23H2, but I haven’t told it to install, so it’s telling me everything is uptodate. But googling the relevant KB taken from the description of the pre-release from my Windows update page, I can see that it does indeed include upgrade to .

In reply to @jim_lewis

I also have an XPS 8930, looked it up and found that this M2 card will work: Intel AX210 WiFi 6E Wireless Card.

It should be here tomorrow, might not get it installed right away. Feel free to nudge me if I don’t report back.

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