For anyone out there who is using Made For IOS (MFI) hearing aids, from many manufacturers but including Resound, Widex, Phonak and Oticon for example, if you are thinking of getting a phone from the new iPhone 12 family, you would be well advised to wait.
The Apple community has several threads about this and the problems are affecting many hearing aid users. The issue is that the iphone 12 randomly and continually disconnects from one or the other or both aids when it is streaming audio, for example from a website or podcast or a phone call and randomly streams static or other spurious noises to one or both aids when you are web browsing.
Unfortunately although Apple know about this, they have not yet sorted out a fix and the problems persists with IOS 14.2
I have gone back to using my iPhone XS (which works perfectly with my Resound Linx Quattros and put the iPhone 12 back in its box for the next month or two…)
Edit: Actually I am returning the IPhone 12 as it’s still inside my mobile operator’s cooling off period for on-line purchases.
I’m not sure whether anyone is reading this thread, which with one post isn’t really a thread yet! But anyway Apple have just acknowledged this problem which affects all iPhone 12 models and issued a support document that says basically “we will fix this with a future firmware update”.
If Richard will allow this link, you can read what Apple say here (but if the link doesn’t survive you can read much the same on MacRumors).
Well I may be talking to myself, but for anyone who is following this, Apple have just released IOS 14.2.1 which includes a fix for this hearing aid issue on iphone 12. No news yet on whether it works or not.
Hi David, just updated my iPhone 12 with the latest OS and noticed the hearing apparatus software fix. Although I am not impacted by this issue I do think it was pretty shoddy for Apple to release OS14 and the iPhone without the matter being resolved first. All smacks of rushing the release to make a few more $$$$.
Cheers
Neil
I think that Apple truly hadn’t realised the problem existed. It took several days of people reporting the problem in the Apple community for reports of Apple help desk/support workers acknowledging the issue to start to appear. Then it only took two weeks for Apple to devise and release a bug fix.
But it is interesting to think about Apple’s beta testing regime in the light of Naim’s ongoing issues with new platform streamers. If Apple with all their resources can’t get it right, there should be no surprise that Naim struggles sometimes.
Incidentally for anyone reading this thread who has a personal interest, the IOS 14.2.1 fix does appear to be mostly working. But I can’t test it myself until my new iPhone 12 is delivered, as I returned the original one when I discovered the problem.
When I first got my new hearing aids I tried listening to a Qobuz CD quality album streamer from my phone and it was indescribably bad. I’d assumed that was the way it was and that was that.
Now, with the new iOS I’ve tried Qobuz again, both MP3 and CD quality and it’s transformed. Absolutely brilliant. Now I’ve subscribed to Qobuz I can download albums and take them on holiday. It’s a good job the phone has 128GB of memory.