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For many wearing hearing aids is not an option, this is the case for my wife. The problem is she hates them. The primary reason she hates them is because she can create a custom setting on the Phonak App and then it defaults back to Autosense or the prescription setting. If you Google this issue, you will find that many are having the same problem and if you go to Phonak’s forums you will discover they appear to be clueless. After looking into my wife’s remote app, I not only discovered the fix, but the cause of the problem. Continue reading to discover the problem and the solution. However, do not drop to the solution for the quick fix, without understanding the why; you may not like the solution. First the PROBLEM: As a person needing hearing aids, like my wife yours may have cost over $6,000.00. At first you are excited, you can create custom settings on the Phonak app for just about any situation and by wearing them all the time, your brain will adjust to the background noise and in time you will adjust. But then you quickly discover that once you have created a custom setting on the Phonak remote app, it reverts back to Autosense and sometimes this is so unexpected that it causes hearing pain. The Phonak Company has identified the issue. Every time ANY sound is created on the phone, this includes keyboard sounds, ANY notification from any app, any audio sound made, the remote app defaults back to Autosense. On the Phonak website the suggested “fix” is to turn off ALL notifications, this even includes text, social media, and it would even include severe weather related notifications. This is simply NOT an option. Phonak’s expectation is the every sound and audio made on the phone is to be played through the hearing aids. However if you take them out at night and it is dangerous weather you need to hear notifications. The expectation is that you will go through the advanced settings on your phone EVERY time to turn notification on and off. This is not practical. The solution provided on Phonak’s website is not realistic. So what is happening that is causing the Phonak Remote App to default to Autosense every time any audio sound is made on the phone? I will explain using Android, but the same applies to iPhone. In Android if you go to SETTINGS>CONNECTIONS>BLUETOOTH you will see your Phonak connection like in the image displayed.  Tap the TOP setting. The next image shows what you should see. PHONE and AUDIO, one or both sliders may be in the ON position. This is where the POF (Point of Failure) is. The point of the AUDIO slider is to allow ALL audio sounds made by the phone to be played through the hearing aids. This includes all notifications, all of them. People use thousands of different sounds, voices and beeps as notifications. Such a large scale of audio sounds is the POF. The hearing aids are not able to sort out such a large ongoing different amount of audio sounds, so the solution that hearing aids will do is to default to the prescription setting or Autosense. This is something that Phonak can’t fix because Android and iPhone will not allow any developer to access the internal settings of the system notifications or the code of another app. So in order for Phonak to overcome this issue with their code they would need to add code that would be able to sort through all these audio sounds and Android and Apple will not allow that. Each developer of each app is given a “key” to code their app only. So Phonak can’t create code for their app to sort through all the audio sounds.
The SOLUTION:
Sadly the only solution is to turn the sliders for Phone and Audio to the off position. Let’s look at this image. Here you see 3 Phonak settings under Bluetooth. The BOTTOM 2 please leave them on. These are for the remote settings to control the volume and custom settings that you will create on the remote app. The BOTTOM 2 are only for SETTINGS from the Phonak remote app to the hearing aids. However the TOP setting, if you tap on it will take you to the sliders for Phone and Audio. These settings allow AUDIO to be transmitted through Bluetooth to the hearing aids. Although you set the controls on the remote app, the changes occur in the hearing aids. As one tech taught me, each hearing aid is a tiny computer. So you control the hearing aids through the Phonak Remote app. With the 2 sliders in the on position for Phone and Audio all sounds made on the cellphone are transmitted to the hearing aids and some of those sounds are forcing the hearing aids to default to Autosense. So the only solution that I have found is to turn both sliders to the off position. This will of course not allow the user to answer calls or play music through the hearing aids. So a choice has to be made.
#Phonak #Deaf #Hearingloss #Hearingaids #signlanguage [Gregory Watts has 5 IT degrees including a CompTIA A+ certification. He got his start in the IT field in 1983 writing computer code.] The more technically explanation involves describing permissions, interrupt request, obtaining permissions from Android and iPhone and more. When writing this I kept in mind those who would be using the feature and not techs. |
AuthorDeWayne Watts: I started out writing short stories and poetry. Some of which was published in the 1980's. I have parts of 5 novels written and have completed 2 novels. I have been married over 25 years and raised 2 wonderful sons who have been a great addition to the human family. Follow me on GOODREADS
The 3 Novels/Books Written By DeWayne Watts
"David's mark"
Click Title to Buy the Book. 
"The Boy in The Wood"
Click Title To Buy The Book. 
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