Connect a hearing aid to the phone
Pair hearing aids with a phone, so that calls, music and the television come straight into your ears with nothing in between.
Most hearing aids fitted in the last few years, including a great many fitted through a hearing clinic, can receive sound directly from a phone. Not through the air, through the microphone — straight in, as a wireless headphone does.
That changes a telephone call completely. Instead of holding a handset near an aid that is already working hard, the voice arrives inside the aid at the volume your audiologist set. The same applies to music, radio, videos and, with a small extra box, the television.
Pairing is the same operation as pairing headphones, with one difference worth knowing: a pair of aids connects as a single device, so you will often see one name in the list rather than two.
Key points
- Pair hearing aids with a phone from the Hearing devices page
- Send telephone calls, music and videos straight into both aids
- Control the aids from the lock screen without unlocking anything
- Use the phone as a microphone across a noisy table
What to remember
- Hearing aids have their own page under Accessibility, separate from ordinary Bluetooth devices.
- Nine times in ten, a device that will not appear has stopped announcing itself. Switch it off and on, then look again immediately.
- Live listen puts the phone’s microphone in front of whoever is speaking, and sends it to your aids or earphones.
Try this
If you are not sure which aids you have, telephone the audiologist who fitted them and ask whether your model streams to a phone, and which app goes with it. They are asked this every day and the answer takes a minute.
Practice: Connect a hearing aid to the phone. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.