I'll tell you what is NOT hot!

I have Phonak Audeos paired over bluetooth with my iPhone. A few years prior, I used to have Oticon, also paired with my iPhone.

With the Oticon, if I made a cellphone call, the iPhone would use the default iPhone microphone while the audio would stream to my hearing aids. It was good that way because in a noisy environment I could hold the iphone right up to my mouth and the other party would be able to hear what I was saying.

With the newer Phonaks, I was very disappointed to find that the new hearing aids would only use the microphone input that is built into the hearing aids themselves, and not the iPhone mic input. I discovered this when I realised that talking directly into iPhone mic did not make it any easier for the other party to hear me.

I complained to my Audiologist who explained that yes, the new hearing aids were copying the behaviour of Apple AirPods, which also have the mic input on the earpod itself, and that there was no way at all to configure the Phonaks to use the iPhone mic input instead.

Why is this a problem you might ask? Because my hearing aids are Behind The Ear (BTE) and thus the mic input on the hearing aid is a good 4 inches away from my face and thus my voice cannot possibly sound as clear as when I could speak directly into an iPhone mic.

When I next replace my hearing aids, I shall look for aids that do not mimic this crappy AirPods behaviour...

▲

dmcc7897 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can change the mic during calls now on iOS.

During a call, swipe down for the control centre. You’ll see an option at the very top to adjust the audio options. Mic input is just there.

▲

Balinares 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I trialed hearing aids a little while ago and ended up not committing, because the sound quality was bad, wheezy and tinny, and gave me headaches. Particularly bad in noisy environments, which is where I'd most need the help. Also the app sucked, Bluetooth pairing broke all the time and the controls were just confusing.

They were Phonaks.

I guess I'm glad to hear that it's not intrinsically a hearing aid thing, and I may find a better experience with other brands.

▲

konradb 9 hours ago | parent [-]

The tinniness is something your brain adjusts to and prices in, and if your hearing aid is properly set up, it is very likely that to start with it will sound tinny if your hearing is deficient with high frequencies. It is boosting those frequencies to make up for your lack in hearing. You probably need a good 2-6 months to adjust.

Mine were exactly like this to start with and over time the effect goes away such that you don't notice. I'd recommend if you do actually have hearing problems, sticking with it for quality of life improvements.

	▲	tqwhite 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Me, too.

▲

seltzered_ 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

An elaboration on how complicated call handling can be with hearing aids (and how I wanted AirPods-like behavior): I assisted someone with purchasing hearing aids a year ago, and we first had a pair of Philips and returned them within a few months because they only worked with iPhone for supporting phone calls with the microphone on the hearing aids themselves, for Android it didnt work. Even the next generation Philips 9050 that supported Auracast didnt support this.

We ended up with Phonaks rebranded as Sennheisers. The audio quality during calls may not be as clear as a separate mic (what i believe you refer to as oticon), but from a user experience its nice to not have to fish out your phone to answer a call or wonder why you can hear the other person but they cant hear you.

Note that my complaint here is specific to Android support.

	▲	fouc 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Seems a bit sad/ironic that it sounds like the solution in OP's case would be to switch to Android for that exact behavior that your side didn't want. (And that switching to iPhone would bring that "feature" in) I personally use iPhone and I do prefer to leave phone in pocket for my phone call. But it does seems like a massive oversight to not make this configurable.

▲

ezfe 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is the case for any Bluetooth microphone headset, it has nothing to do with the hearing aid “trying to mimic AirPods “it is because Apple refuses to give us fine-grained controls on our Bluetooth devices

	▲	Nextgrid 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Depends if the hearing aid presents itself as an audio sink (with no mic) or as a headset with mic. The phone will only use the mic if it's available (which is generally what you want if you're using an actual headset).

▲

Barbing 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

iOS 26 finally enabled custom mic selection!

Settings > Sound & Haptics > Input > change from "Automatic: ..." to "iPhone Microphone"

▲

7839284023 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Which sadly does not work very reliably. At least on my end the selection changes back to default every few days. I reported this issue over the Apple Feedback app already…

	▲	dmcc7897 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, that’s my experience too. I have to choose during each call by opening the control centre and choosing the audio settings option for the ongoing call. This does seem to let me enable voice isolation though, which seems to work very well.

▲

pugworthy 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yea, my Phonak + iPhone experience was not great. I stopped using any integration with them after a while and now just use AirPods for all my calls, music, etc. I have open domes and can pull off wearing both, but do take the HAs out now and then when I just want to focus and let the noise cancellation do its thing.

▲

KingMob 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I have the same problem, but I always assumed it was Apple's fault. I don't know why the HAs/Airpods have the final say.

I don't think there's a way around it on the iphone, but I was able to cobble a fix for my macbook at least. It uses Shortery to run a Shortcut whenever my HA connects. The Shortcut runs a shell script that uses https://github.com/deweller/switchaudio-osx/ to determine the built-in mic and switch back to it immediately:

BUILTIN_MIC_ID=$(switch-audio --list-input | jq 'map(select(.name == "MacBook Pro Microphone")) | .[0].id') switch-audio --set-input="$BUILTIN_MIC_ID"

▲

Barbing 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Nice.

And AirPodsSanity (& SoundAnchor) offer polished options here. Maybe using that same script underneath!

▲

fouc 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Interesting, wouldn't the MBP microphone be even further away than the HA's microphone?

▲

Doohickey-d 11 hours ago | parent [-]

It's also my experience that people who use the Airpods audio in meetings = poor sound, whereas when they switch to the Macbook, it's much better.

I think the Macbook does some more advanced beamforming stuff to filter out sound coming from other directions.

	▲	mschuster91 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I think the Macbook does some more advanced beamforming stuff to filter out sound coming from other directions. It does, and that also gave the Asahi Linux team some serious headache when trying to get the microphones working on the ARM MacBooks - the team involved in that had to delve deep into DSP black magic to get usable sound working out of the three microphones [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43461701