Hearing Aids Broaden Their Scope, Even to Haunting the Wearers

The technology in hearing aids continues to develop, enabling them to offer their wearers additional functions beyond sound amplification. Hearing aids maker Widex has upgraded its MOMENT family of hearing aids to offer streaming music, calls, and other content from Android smartphones (Android Audio Streaming for Hearing Aids (ASHA). (This should not be mistaken for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.) In an unrelated development, Apple Inc. is exploring possibilities to add health-related functions such as enhancing hearing, reading body temperature, and monitoring posture to its AirPods. Unfortunately, ill-meaning people could use the technology for evil ends, including haunting the wearers. Unrelated to Android and Apple, we ourselves had a scary experience: We were wearing our hearing aids and they were working fine when they started saying “Check Partner”, but when we checked both of the hearing aids they were in place just fine. Then we started hearing a couple of voicemails loud enough for us to understand.

Since 2020, Apple included Headphone Accommodations in the new iOS releases; the sound picked up by these microphones is amplified with both frequency-dependency gain and compression, giving App AirPods Pro hearing aid-like capability. 

Using Your Smartwatch to Control Your Hearing Aids

If you are rich enough or lucky enough to have a top-rated brand of hearing aids such as Oticon, ReSound, Starkey, or Widex you can control them using a smartwatch. You can control them–as well as the Hearlink range of Philips and Zerena range of Bernafon—using a smartwatch. You can also control a range of other brands using Starkey’s TruLink Hearing Control using the iPhone and iPad, as well as some Pebble smartwatches, three Android Wear watches, the Samsung Gear S Moto 360, and Asus Zen Watch.

You Can Hear Better Using an iPhone or Apple Watch

Apple products offer a wide range of capabilities thanks to its hardware and apps. Among those apps are ways to hear better.

For those wearing hearing aids made by major manufacturers Oticon, Resound, Starkey, or Widex, they can use the Apple Watch app.

And those people not wearing hearing aids can use Apple AirPods.

One of the reasons that people who are hard of hearing don’t wear hearing aids is that they don’t want others to think they are “over the hill”. But Apple AirPod users are unlikely to feel that way, nor are Apple Watch wearers (there’s an April 5, 2018, YouTube on CNET called “Can hearing aids be as hip as the Apple Watch?”)