Everyone has seen the iPhone and what it can do.
But did you know now that it can be a hearing aid as well?
SoundAMP recently released a hearing aid application for the iPhone. The way it works is simple–it uses the built-in microphone to amplify sound like any other hearing aid. You choose the level, as well as which tones to jack up the most (useful for isolating a particular voice, or eliminating a constant background noise). The app also stores the last 30 seconds of audio in a temporary cache, in case you missed anything the first time around. to attain the sound and then amplifies it accordingly to improve the hearing. When looking at this hearing aid app, it made me wonder; how is it similar to the typical hearing aids on the market and does it make a good substitute for an actual hearing aid?
• The digital hearing aid in some ways does work similar to the hearing application. It too can adjust volume of various sounds to properly amplify the sounds. While the digital aid does do this automatically, the hearing application does this manually.
• The digital hearing aid does not have a recording cache that can let you listen to what was said before if anything should be missed, the digital hearing aid can’t do this.
• The digital hearing aids have preprogrammable settings for common environments and the hearing app does not.
• Using a neck loop, digital hearing aids can be plugged directly into the source of the sound if it has a standard input jack, the iPhone does not have this ability.
• Digital hearing aids (and almost all aids out there today) are custom designed to suit the individual using it. The application is a general purpose which may not help everyone who needs assistance hearing.
So the SoundAMP is a great application, but it can never replace a real hearing aid. It however, can never replace the real hearing aid. If one really needs one, they should first consult the audiologist to see what their best options are.
Tags: digital hearing aid, digital hearing aids, hearing aid, hearing aids, iphone
