The TRUTH about Hearing Aid Bluetooth Issues

Hello! I'm looking for a NON OTC, Audiologist approved, ITE hearing aids w/BT connectivity and rechargeable for 2024. Any recommendations?

I have Phonak hearing aids. Can you provide a POC at Phonak or a web address that I can check to see when Bluetooth updates are pushed down to providers. The audiologist I work with has never called me in the last 4 years to tell me Phonak has a Bluetooth update even thought I complain about Bluetooth issues. All of the audiologist I have ever worked with know anything nor want to know anything about Bluetooth functionality in hearing aids. Worse yet Phoniak seem to hide this information on their web site.

Hey Cliff, thanks for this great description of the BT connectivity problem! Just over a month ago, I bought my first HA's – Widex Sheer 440s to address my tinnitus and hearing loss as a musician. I just experienced my first connectivity issue when my iPhone updated to 17.1.1 yesterday. The Widex update was nearly instantaneous, and it was successful.
On a related issue, I've wanted to connect my windows 10 laptop to my HA's with BT. Just ordered the new Widex SoundConnect device. Have you reviewed it yet? I'd be interested in your thoughts.

If there are already such massive problems with standard Bluetooth, then it is foreseeable that these Bluetooth problems will increase with Auracast, especially since Auracast is a completely new Bluetooth system with a completely new hardware chip from version 5.2 upwards?And what about firmware updates for hearing aids? My Bluetooth hearing aids are now 3 years old and there has never been a firmware update and never will be.

Yikes!

Doc Cliff, I'm new to hearing aids and now a 3 months user of Phonak Adeo L90. They have been a game changer, and I'm sorry I waited so long to get them. Love them.

Now, let's talk Bluetooth.

My numerous (12+?) Bluetooth devices work great with everything from mobile devices (iOS and Android), 2 PCs, 2 automobiles, 4 stereo systems, 2 cameras, etc. Yup, I'm that guy.

The progress I've seen with Bluetooth over the decades finally makes the technology graceful and fun.

The Bluetooth implementation of my Phonak Adeo L90s is infuriating.

And if you go online, I'm not alone. Lot's of people have the same problems as I do. And my Audiologist and ENT care team say it's their number one patient complaint.

My Adeos behave like my Bluetooth devices from a decade ago; clumsy, dropping connections, not connecting, etc., on a daily basis.

As you know, these are $7K devices when it's all said and done.

What am I missing? Your explanation doesn't make sense to me.

If it's all about updates from "mobile companies," as you say, why don't my other Bluetooth devices see these problems?

All ears.

Thank you!

Best,

Emmett

As a potential user of the Oticon Real1 in the near future, I am somewhat perplexed about Bluetooth pairing with a PC. Why is a manufactures 3rd party device required to pair my hearing aids to a PC? Is this just marketing to extract more money from patients or are there security protection protocols in play? If I can pair my hearing aids with my Apple phone/tablet, why can’t I pair them with a Bluetooth capable PC with matching Bluetooth version 5.0+?

The bluetooth connectivity with my S21 Ultra has always been spotty and unrealiable. Better now that they updated their Philips hearlink app but still bad. It's been like this for years. I don't know if I'll ever get sound without the skips and waves.

i had that problem but it seems to be when I'm home whenever i'm outside my home the problem goes away so for a long time I was thinking it has to do with something in my home maybe I'm wrong now can you tell me if I'm wrong with it being my home

Thanks for making a concise video to help substantiate what I've been telling our patients after every major mobile operating system update! Of course, nobody has pin-pointed the exact cause of all these problems. I've theorized some of the intermittency issues could be directly related to Bluetooth LE (low-energy) being pushed that otherwise helps improve battery efficiency with mobile devices, but perhaps some of the protocols that help it be more stringent on power usage also compromises consistent re-connecting to paired hearing aids.
The story is always the same, they initially pair up nicely in office, which makes sense because you're essentially forcing them to acknowledge each other with a strong handshake. The problem is every time they reconnect on their own, it doesn't always complete like it should. I've further been suspicious this may ultimately be a simple time-out issue that neither an end-user nor an app developer has the ability to adjust. Often one side will repeatedly be the one that doesn't connect, although the system may claim that it is. The usual successful trouble-shooting method is to close all open apps then toggle the Bluetooth off and on. This clears out anything in the background that could be sapping performance, then toggling the Bluetooth forces the phone to re-attempt to connect to the hearing aids while the phone is focused on just doing that. The fact that this usually works, tells me that phones are literally "giving up" on connecting to the second side because reduced performance is causing it to take too long relative to a pre-programmed timer for that operation.
Catch is, every other Bluetooth pairing is only a single device to reconnect to. Even if they're stereo true wireless earbuds, you connect to one ear that acts as the master that broadcasts to the opposite side. Hearing aids however are unique as they use a Bluetooth signal to communicate, but the operating system acknowledges them as specifically being hearing devices as opposed to any other Bluetooth device and subsequently connects to both sides individually in the "Bluetooth Devices" list while yet still addressing them as a single paired entity in the "Hearing Devices" list. Which leads me to think there's a tiny oversight in the protocol for connecting to them in that they're still being treated like they're a traditional Bluetooth device, and the phone is only really allotting the reasonable amount of time to connect to ONE device (again possibly a result of trying to be more power efficient, it won't keep churning on attempting to connect to a single paired device if there's an issue). Upon timing out on the second, no further attempts are made to retry connecting to the other side, as the phone detects that yes, it did successfully connect to a Bluetooth device! It fails to acknowledge there's another half of the set that isn't connected as that's not usually the case for Bluetooth devices and apparently it's missing a provision to check for that. You can see this confusion particularly on an iPhone when you check the hearing aid status in the Settings/Accessibility/Hearing Device menu, you'll see it shows both sides "connected" but one of them will just be a spinning circle for the battery percentage estimate. That's because it's falsely reporting a complete connection for the pair again due to having success with the one side, but in reality it is not hooked up to the other.
Frustrating, because regardless what the core issue is, it's very difficult for hearing aids manufacturers to compensate for things an operating system is doing at such a base level, they cannot touch patching how the system connects to a Bluetooth device with an update to their app or the firmware of their hearing aids. While, of course, hearing aid connectivity is just an auxiliary feature to the phone manufacturers and no doubt is not a top priority to develop software/firmware fixes for, certainly not redeveloping a protocol that overall was a benefit to the phone otherwise. They'll get it figured out eventually… when they get around to it, and with no reassurance it won't inadvertently be reversed when trying to push future updates! Meanwhile it's advertised that phones work with hearing aids because they've technically made a provision for it, and of course hearing aid manufacturers advertise they're compatible with select phones because they really are doing everything they can to be, the goal-post just keeps moving arbitrarily. Only natural that patients see the hearing aids as the issue as they're typically the newest thing added to the mix unfortunately, and the phone was being a phone just fine prior to these confounded hearing aids the fitter has attempted to connect to it.

whats a good transmitter to use for the zoom podtrak p8, i want to broadcast the headphone output to bluetooth hearing aids for my podcast channel where i interview the elderly about their stories of yesteryear

Lower-end cell phones do not get regular system software updates so it is hard to blame these intermittent but recurring connectivity issues on phone software updates. My mother experiences severe problems with bluetooth connectivity and even after the audio folk update the hearing aids to the "latest version" the problem will return shortly after leaving their office.

I've had pretty good luck with connectivity between my Miracle Ear and Iphone, but I can't connect to my Imac. Is it possible?

I wore an old analog hearing aid years ago. Until it didn't work anymore. My mother died over a year o and I was just going to use her hearing aids. But I thought maybe I should step it up a notch and get a Bluetooth Hearing Aid. However two hearing aids are useless to me. I was born with little to no hearing in my left ear. I had two ear operations he last one about 55 years ago. It is inner ear and that ear just does not work. So I am really just be going to use my right hearing aid if the model I choose only comes as a pair. What I find most difficult now is hearing directions in my car. If I am on an less busy road I can hear the directions well. If it is a busy road I have problems.

I am on Medicare. Would it work best that I go through an Audiologist first before trying to choose my hearing aid?

Most conversations about Bluetooth in hearing aids refers these days to "direct audio streaming".
But Bluetooth in hearing aids is not only for direct audio streaming. As a matter of fact, hearing aids do not have wide enough frequency range to appreciate music properly. Good quality headphones are the way to go.

BT in HA's is used primarily to connect the HA's with "the app" to enable remote control of the HA's – changing volume, programs, and checking the battery status.
So it is very annoying to find out one sunny morning that the app can't connect to the HA's.

Complaints about Bluetooth problems raised to the HA manufacturer are responded to by saying that my smartphone is not on their list of compatible devices. Which is true, but irrelevant. Because it has the latest Android 13, and is compatible with the ASHA protocol. And ASHA protocol is not needed for control functions anyway.
The average customer service representative does not seem to know what is going on.

Unreliable BT in hearing aids is worse than no BT at all. Because there are other – proprietary – ways of connecting HA's to a smart device, but manufacturers decided to use BT for its universality.

So it is very disappointing that the hearing aid industry, the HCP associations together with the relevant health departments and/or the FDA do not exert pressure on Android OS owners/developers, and on the smartphone manufacturers, to ensure that all updates to their software are properly tested, and do not degrade BT connectivity with hearing aids.
Most updates are for introducing new fancy features that only a few people will appreciate, or even explore.
But they adversely affect hundreds of thousands of people with impaired hearing.
Most HA users are old(er) people, and not many of those are familiar with pairing, restarting, etc, etc. They need somebody to help them to do that.

Informative but not helpful. I am due for new hearing aids (old Starkey ones just stopped working) and NEED ones that will connect with my COMPUTER (Dell Desktop/Laptop) as well as my Motorola Cell phone (moto g stylus 5G). I am a health/wellness counselor and need this connectivity so I am not encumbered talking to clients. So far NO LUCK AT ALL. But thanks anyway!

I’m having awful Bluetooth connectivity issues with my heating aids. My provider is working on resolving. Why is this only with hearing aids?? I’ve used multiple Bluetooth devices from several brands and never had an issue. Until I started using hearing aids. Seems like they aren’t technologically sound to me.