Augmented Xperience: Furthering its mission to enhance human performance, hearing aid innovator Signia today announced that its breakthrough Augmented Xperience (AX) hearing aid platform will now support hands-free phone calls. The HandsFree feature upgrade will be available Spring 2022 for all new and existing AX hearing aids paired with iOS devices.
By utilizing the HandsFree feature, consumers with select iOS devices will be able to hold conversations through their Signia AX hearing aids without having to speak directly into their phone or tablet. Instead, the hearing aids’ microphones will pick up the wearer’s voice and transmit it to the conversation partner at the other end of the line via Bluetooth®.
“With the HandsFree upgrade, wearers can keep their phone comfortably stowed in their pocket, purse, or even across the room whenever they take a call,” stated Mike O’Neil, President of Signia USA. “The HandsFree feature further underscores our commitment to enhancing human performance through optimized hearing – even when the conversation isn’t taking place in-person.”
This new upgrade marks the latest in Signia’s ongoing commitment to providing consumers with the effortless streaming and connectivity they require to enhance their performance – whether that be in in-person or on the phone.
Leveraging the benefits of Signia AX technology for hands-free phone calls
Through the Augmented Xperience platform, wearers benefit from outstanding speech clarity when taking hands-free calls at home, in the office, or on a busy street. Rather than simply amplifying all sounds, the AX platform intelligently understands which sounds should be pulled to the foreground and prioritized, and which sounds should remain in the background.
Rooted in the first-of-its-kind Augmented Focus™ technology – which leverages two independent processors to address speech and background noise separately – speech becomes closer to the wearer while surrounding sounds stay in the background.
Studies have shown that Signia AX results in greater than 25 percent better speech understanding in noise compared to users’ own hearing aids. Additionally, 95% of study participants reported excellent speech understanding in their home environment.[1]
Signia AX has proven to change how wearers hear the world in quiet, moderate and noisy environments. By elevating the listening experience in all surroundings, wearers can enjoy a fully immersive soundscape anywhere they take a hands-free phone call.
“The HandsFree feature is one of several additional innovative features in the pipeline for the AX platform,” added O’Neil. “When hearing care professionals fit a patient with Signia AX hearing aids, they can be confident that they’re giving patients not only an exceptional solution today, but also one that’s future-proofed for tomorrow.”
The HandsFree feature will be available in all new and existing Signia AX hearing aids through an update in Spring 2022.