Are the Oticon More aids that much better than the OPN aids?

[Volusiano]

@Volusiano : You realize I am using 312 disposable batteries, right? (I've quit the recyclable battery camp, and I'm never going back until the industry forces me to by giving me no choice, as it did, when I got my More1s.)

Yes, I wrote the question with the disposable battery in mind. That's why I said battery cycle, not charge cycle. What I'm thinking is that if one of the disposable batteries has some kind of anomaly that gives it a slightly higher voltage than normal, then that's why the aid that contains the odd disposable battery keeps showing 100% no matter which aid you put it on. It's obvious that both aids function normal with the normal battery put in (showing the correct percentage), it's only with the odd battery that the aids display 100% all the times. The question then is whether that aids that keep showing 100% quit on you yet? That's the next data point to observe. And also, what if you put the odd battery aside and break out another new disposable battery to see how both aids behave with the new one? That's why I asked how many battery (not charge) cycles you've gone through, just to see if it gets back to normal if that was indeed an odd battery situation.

 

[SpudGunner]

Hmmm. I must admit that this line of thinking never entered my mind, because when i switched out the batteries, the right aid started showing 100% all the time, also..

 

[SpudGunner]

What I'm thinking is that if one of the disposable batteries has some kind of anomaly that gives it a slightly higher voltage than normal, then that's why the aid that contains the odd disposable battery keeps showing 100% no matter which aid you put it on.

Sorry ... I'm not following, MrV. Like why does the indicated charge stay at 100% even after I've swapped out batteries and put the old battery that shows 10% in the other aid?

 

[Volusiano]

Does any Forum member know whether or not the Oticon Real hearing aids with disposable batteries show the available power in the battery through the ON app? (@Volusiano, @pvc?) My right aid shows a number which makes sense, but the left aid always seems to show 100%. I'm confused. I changed the batteries from left to right and now the right one always shows 100%, too. Whassup, Doc?

[For the record: I got 7 days from my first pair of 312 batteries in my new Real2 hearing devices:
16->18 hrs/day, no streaming ...]

The way I read your bold part above, you said that the left aid showed 100% on the left battery, and the right aid showed the correct (lower level) for the right battery. Then when you swapped the batteries from left to right, now the right aid shows 100% with the battery that was on the left aid which caused the left aid to show 100% before. You didn't say whether the left aid now with the battery that used to be in the right aid (showing a normal lower value before) is showing the normal value now or not, but I assume that it was implied. So the battery that was on the left aid before and causing the left aid to show 100% before, now it got put into the right aid, and now causing the right aid to show 100% -> so my deduction based on what you're saying here is that the battery for some reason is THE culprit because it caused the left aid to show 100% first when it was in the left aid, then now when it was moved to the right aid, it now caused the right aid to show 100% -> the battery is the culprit for the 100% value display, neither of the aids are the culprit, because the aids are just reflecting what the voltage of this odd culprit battery has.

 

[Volusiano]

Sorry ... I'm not following, MrV. Like why does the indicated charge stay at 100% even after I've swapped out batteries and put the old battery that shows 10% in the other aid?

See, this is not what you said before, per my post just above. Now you're saying an entirely different thing, that your left aid showed 100% with a battery, and when you put the old battery (from the right aid?) which you know was shown by the right aid to have only 10% into the left aid, the left aid still shows 100% on this 10% battery. This implies that the left aid battery reading is defective, always showing 100% regardless of which battery you put in. In this case, I would experiment further with more used batteries, and if the left aid continues to display 100% regardless of what kind of know used up battery (as indicated by the right aid) is put into it, then I would ask Oticon to replace the left aid because its battery reading is defective.

 

[SpudGunner]

See, this is not what you said before, per my post just above. Now you're saying an entirely different thing,

Sorry Mr. V, I'm having a terrible job these days following conversations on the small phone because of my cataracts. I miss reading things and even when I read it the second time sometimes I skim over quickly and I miss words or misinterpret words. So consequently, I think I should just wait and see my audiologist, but even that may be premature because I've only had my aids a week, and consequently have only gone through one set of batteries.

I just don't want to start arguing over what I think I said, and what you think I said. I did my best to express that when I swapped out the batteries, no matter what I did the left-hand aid always read 100%. Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

I think I should just wait until next week and get my audiologist to check it out when I see him for my fitting follow up.

The Oticon site doesn't clarify how to check the level of disposable batteries, that I can see.

 

[SpudGunner]

Soooo.... I installed fresh batteries in my aids this morning. If the batteries are going to last, on average, 7 days, then I should be down by a bit more than 14% tonight - in other words, my Oticon apps should indicate 86% charge remaining. Both hearing devices are indicating 100% power remaining. Both of them show 100%.

Wassup wit datt? (This is just the second set of batteries into the new devices. Do the aids have to go through several 100%->0% cycles in order to calibrate themselves?)

 

[Volusiano]

Soooo.... I installed fresh batteries in my aids this morning. If the batteries are going to last, on average, 7 days, then I should be down by a bit more than 14% tonight - in other words, my Oticon apps should indicate 86% charge remaining. Both hearing devices are indicating 100% power remaining. Both of them show 100%.

Wassup wit datt? (This is just the second set of batteries into the new devices. Do the aids have to go through several 100%->0% cycles in order to calibrate themselves?)

I think this goes back to what @e1405 was saying about the inability of the battery level estimator on the hearing aid to make it accurate enough, especially in the first few days of usage. It simply measures the voltage level of the battery and tried to convert that into remaining charge estimate, but as you see below, the voltage curve for the 312 Zinc-Air battery over time at a 1 mA discharge rate is fairly flat until it almost precipitously falls off the edge of the clip (except for a few on display here). While there's a very slight slope for most of them that should help with the estimate, the very slight slope doesn't lend to help give it enough accuracy.



As for Lithium-ion batteries, below is an example voltage curve over time for it at a constant discharge load. Note however that this is not for a typical Lithium-ion HEARING AID battery because it cannot supply a 2000 mA load like in this example (which is 2000x compared to the discharge load of 1 mA in the chart above for the 312 size Zinc-Air). But the characteristic of the Lithium-ion battery scaled to the hearing aid size should not be that much different anyway. You can see that with the Zinc-Air battery above, the slope is about maybe around 0.2 volt drop only over its life cycle. Compared that to the Lithium-ion 0.7 volt drop over its life cycle, a 3 to 4x difference -> easier to track remaining capacity with a relatively steeper slope. On top of that, the Lithium-ion hearing aid battery gets the majority of its full charge cycle used up within 1 day time, so it makes it easier to combine the voltage measurement with some guesstimate based on the to-the-minute time used during the day, for a more accurate total estimate. The Zinc-Air, on the other hand, usually lasts over the course of 4-5 days, making it much harder to add in a guesstimate to combined with the actual voltage reading for better accuracy.

The bottom line is that most people with disposable Zinc-Air batteries don't care so much on how much is left on their battery anyway because if one runs out, you just pop a new one in without worrying about being SOL because it takes time to charge the spent battery up. There's no longer a need to be obsessed over the remaining charge of your battery because premature out-of-battery anxiety doesn't exist like with Lithium-ion batteries anymore. So over time, they can kind of estimate for themselves how many days their batteries last depending on usage, and that's good enough for them. For example, if they can guess that their disposable lasts between 4.5 to 5 days based on their typical usage, for example, then they can decide to just change out to new batteries after 4 days if they don't want to be caught with a dead battery in the middle of the day. Those who want to squeeze out every mA of their disposable battery will simply always carry spares with them on the go and just pop a new one in as the old one runs out.

 

[e1405]

Very nice read, @Volusiano. I couldn't identify which zinc-air battery lasts long, was it Duracell?

For example, if they can guess that their disposable lasts between 4.5 to 5 days based on their typical usage, for example, then they can decide to just change out to new batteries after 4 days if they don't want to be caught with a dead battery in the middle of the day.

I'd add that the hearing aids start to beep to alert you when the battery has low juice. That usually gives us a couple of hours until it really dies, which in most cases is enough time to get a new battery ready.

 

[pvc]

Hmm; Methinks that percentage-of-Zinc–air-battery-life-remaining is too diffucult to estimate because there are too many variables. For example if you stream all day for the first three days on new disposable batteries, then that should result in a quicker discharge rate than no streaming, right?

So I am thinking that Oticon's Zinc–air battery life Guesstimator must be making assumptions (as opposed to any direct measurement of milliampere hours (mAh) remaining). And the assumptions are likely coarse assumptions. For example any-battery-power-interruption (changing batteries or switching sides) = Assumption#1 always reset battery life to 100% assuming a new fresh battery was installed.

Aside from invalid assumptions like Assumption#1, perhaps that Guesstimator is just calculating a rough estimate of battery-life-remaining based on keeping track of your usage statistics. Though, I could be wrong. This is just my guess.

For me personally, I would just wait for the low battery beeps and fuhgeddaboudit.

 

[SpudGunner]

@pvc : I agree - I'm just curious, is all!

I want to thank everybody that responded and share their knowledge about this. It's all black magic to me. (I've often wondered how anything like a hearing aid could have innards smart enough to calculate the remaining life in a disposable battery).

 

[Volusiano]

Very nice read, @Volusiano. I couldn't identify which zinc-air battery lasts long, was it Duracell?


I'd add that the hearing aids start to beep to alert you when the battery has low juice. That usually gives us a couple of hours until it really dies, which in most cases is enough time to get a new battery ready.

Yeah, if you click on the screenshot to blow it up, that orange line looks like is for the Duracell.

 

[SpudGunner]

As I told @Volusiano that I would, I reported this anomaly to my audiologist, and he sent me this reply, today:

"I reached out to my Oticon rep, and this is how she responded:

Hello Pete,

I hope you are having a great week! Hmm this is a very interesting case… the app should be showing the battery life. Apparently, non-R are not quite as accurate due to certain properties of the Zinc Air; however it certainly shouldn’t be showing 100% at all times.

I chatted with audiology and apparently, they have seen this a couple times before. It seems to be completely random, but some patients are seeing the 100% battery life. It’s currently under investigation so we don’t have any easy fixes, at the moment. The one positive thing I can say is apparently in one of the very few reported case, it did eventually self-correct itself. I wasn’t given a timeline of how long this took.

My thoughts are we wait perhaps a month and see if it starts to self correct. If not, maybe we consider swapping out the devices and seeing if that would help? I also thought maybe he should delete one app in case they are interfering with each other. It is recommended to only have one (companion is the newer one and may want to go for that one)."

For your information ...

 

[Volusiano]

Thanks for sharing this, @SpudGunner. At least you can take comfort that you're not the only user seeing this. I really do think that it's because the voltage curve for the Zinc-Air battery is so flat that most of the times it would just show 100% then it abruptly gives you a low battery warning signal after the voltage gets dropped precipitously, and after you replace it with a new battery, then you're seeing 100% again a long time for another round.

The more important question is how many days do your batteries last. Surely you must have gone through at least a couple of cycles by now. The importance of the battery level on the disposable aids diminishes significantly once you get a rhythm for how many days you can expect your batteries to last and start counting from there. I almost never bother to monitor mine. I just wait for the low battery warning chime then I take action to replace it. There's really no point in keep monitoring it if it can't be accurate anyway.

Different people may be seeing different levels of accuracy depending on the brand of battery they use.

 

[SpudGunner]

Surely you must have gone through at least a couple of cycles by now.

@Volusiano : No, as I said before - this is only the second set of batteries I'm currently on. I expect to get a week from a pair.

You seem to think this is a practical problem that is hampering my enjoyment of the Real2 devices: it is not.

I'm just curious as to why I don't seem to have a reliable means of monitoring the charge left in my batteries... The fact that others may or not experience the same thing is actually immaterial.

 

[e1405]

I expect to get a week from a pair.

I simulated my hearing loss with Real 2. For my case, Genie 2 says I should expect around 50 hours for the 312 battery. Same Genie says 60 hours for my OPNs, which turns out to be what I really get with them.

 

[Volusiano]

@Volusiamo: No, as I said before - this is only the second set of batteries I'm currently on. I expect to get a week from a pair.

You seem to think this is a practical problem that is hampering my enjoyment of the Real2 devices: it is not.

I'm just curious as to why I don't seem to have a reliable means of monitoring the charge left in my batteries... The fact that others may or not experience the same thing is actually immaterial.

How are you enjoying the Real 2 by the way? Have you had a chance to do some more A/B between the More 1 and Real 2 on the fly? Like with listening to or playing music maybe? It is pretty interesting to hear that the Real 2 is performing better than the More 1 outside of the 2 new features for the Real.

 

[SpudGunner]

@Volusiano: I can definitely hear a difference between the Real2s and the More1s . The Reals seem to be very quiet and I don't know - powerful is the word that comes to mind. They do everything I want them to do in terms of picking up noises from the pets.

I haven't had a chance to do a lot of A./B. analysis of the two types of hearing aids. But I will be sure to post something for everybody because I know there's a lot of interest in this.

My initial opinion, however, is that there is a difference between the Real and the More models, and that it is more than just incremental. There seems to be a qualitative difference between the two devices. I'll let you know more as I find the words for it. Have a great weekend, everyone. (I'm gonna take a break from all this posting!)

 

[SpudGunner]

@Volusiano: Could you please give us another primer on using rechargeable hearing devices as backups and mothballing them properly? Thank you MrV!

 

[pvc]

I can't speak for MrV. Though, there is a DIY School Hearing Aids PDF document mamed (Buying Rechargeable Hearing Aids) that has a section named (Demant/Oticon). The oticon section has instructions for replacing Oticon rechargeable batteries, and also instructions for storing Hearing Aids with rechargeable batteries.

HMm; Maybe I should open a topic (for the Oticon section) here in this forum. I will come back and leave a link pointer if I do.