Hearing Aids and Smartphones: A Quiet Revolution
One of my long-time home-health patients — I'll call her Eleanor, because she would like that — had been wearing hearing aids for fifteen years. The new pair her audiologist fit her with in February changed her relationship with her family more than any single piece of medical technology I have ever seen. They cost roughly the same as the old ones. The difference was that the new ones connect to her iPhone.
That sounds like a small thing. It is not. Below: what this technology actually does, who it's for, and the parts your audiologist may not have time to explain.
What "Bluetooth-connected hearing aids" actually do
A modern hearing aid contains a tiny radio that can talk to your smartphone wirelessly. When the aids are paired with the phone, three things become possible:
First, phone calls stream directly into the hearing aids. The person on the other end of the call sounds like they are talking inside your head, not coming out of a small speaker on the phone you're holding to your ear. You can be doing the dishes while talking to your daughter and hear her perfectly.
Second, anything else the phone plays — music, a podcast, the audio of a video — also streams into the aids. The volume is independent of whatever's happening around you, and other people can't hear what you're listening to.
Third, the audiologist can adjust the hearing aid's settings remotely. If a particular setting isn't working — too much treble, not enough bass on women's voices, whatever it is — your audiologist can change the program over the internet without you driving across town.
The brands and the standards
For iPhone, most modern hearing aids support a standard called "MFi" (Made for iPhone). Phonak, Oticon, Widex, ReSound, Starkey, and Signia all sell models that work. Pairing is a few taps under Settings → Accessibility → Hearing Devices → tap the name when it appears.
For Android, the standard is "ASHA" (Audio Streaming for Hearing Aids). Newer hearing aids support both ASHA and the broader "LE Audio" standard that's rolling out across all Bluetooth devices in 2025 and 2026. Compatibility used to be patchy on Android. As of 2026, it's largely caught up to iPhone.
If you're buying new hearing aids in 2026, ask your audiologist three questions: does this model support iPhone or Android (whichever you have), does it support LE Audio, and what is the battery life for streaming audio specifically? Streaming uses significantly more battery than the aid does on its own — the difference between a four-day battery and an eight-hour day can be entirely about how much you're streaming.
Pairing — the actual steps
For iPhone with MFi aids:
Make sure Bluetooth is on (Settings → Bluetooth → on). Then Settings → Accessibility → scroll to "Hearing Devices" → tap. Open the hearing aids' battery doors briefly to put them in pairing mode (your audiologist will have explained this; if you forgot, the manual is online for your model). The phone should detect them. Tap the name. The phone may ask you to confirm a pairing code shown on the screen.
For Android, the steps are nearly identical: Settings → Connected devices → Pair new device, then same pairing dance with the aids.
Once paired, you'll see a small ear-shaped icon in the iPhone status bar when the aids are connected. On Android, Bluetooth icon plus a hearing-aid notification.
Direct phone calls
Once paired, when a call comes in, the audio goes to your aids automatically. You may want to confirm this with a test call to a friend on day one. If the call audio goes to the phone's earpiece instead of the aids, look on the screen for a small "audio source" button (a speaker icon with a triangle) and tap it to switch to "Hearing Aids."
Some patients prefer to hear calls through the phone's earpiece and use the aids only for ambient hearing. That's fine — the option to switch is always there.
The TV listener feature
Most hearing-aid brands sell a separate accessory called a "TV streamer" or "TV adapter" — a small box, around $200 to $250, that plugs into the television and broadcasts the TV audio directly to your aids. This is the feature my patient Eleanor uses most. She had spent ten years turning the TV up so loud that her grandson refused to watch with her. With the TV streamer, the TV is at a normal volume for everyone else; the audio in her ears is whatever volume she wants.
This is not a smartphone feature directly — but it is the same wireless technology, and most TV streamers can be controlled through the hearing aid's smartphone app.
The hearing-aid app
Each manufacturer publishes a free app for your phone. Phonak's is called myPhonak, Oticon's is Oticon Companion, and so on. The apps let you:
Adjust the volume and the program (e.g., "restaurant mode" vs. "outdoors") without reaching to your ear. Check the battery level on each aid. Find a lost aid using the phone's GPS. Run a hearing test inside the app to suggest adjustments to send to your audiologist.
The find-my-aids feature has saved more patients than I can count. The aids are small and easily lost. The phone shows their last known location on a map.
Things that may not work as advertised
Streaming significantly shortens hearing-aid battery life. The marketing materials emphasize the all-day battery and de-emphasize how much faster it drains while streaming. Some rechargeable models will need a mid-day charge if you stream calls for more than an hour or two.
Connection drops happen occasionally, especially when there's a lot of Wi-Fi in a room or you walk away from the phone. Reconnecting is usually automatic but sometimes requires you to open and close the battery doors. In the rare case where reconnection fails, restart the phone — that fixes most of it.
The microphone you're heard through during a phone call is, on most hearing aids, still the phone's microphone, not a microphone in the aids themselves. So while you hear them perfectly, they hear you through whatever the phone is picking up. If you're in a noisy environment, hold the phone closer to your mouth than feels natural.
Eleanor's quiet revolution
Eleanor used to dread phone calls. She would let calls from her sister go to voicemail because the strain of trying to hear the words on a regular phone, even with her aids, was exhausting. With the new aids, she calls her sister twice a week. Her daughter notices the change more than Eleanor does — Eleanor was always going to keep showing up. It's the texture of the calls that's different. Less repeating. Less "what did you say." More actual conversation.
If you wear hearing aids and you have a smartphone, ask your audiologist about pairing at your next appointment. If your aids are more than four years old, ask whether new ones would meaningfully change what you can hear. It is, in my honest professional opinion, one of the bigger quality-of-life shifts available right now to anyone with mild-to-moderate hearing loss.
Written by Linda Marsh, RN. Reviewed for clinical accuracy by Linda Marsh, RN (BSN, University of Iowa; 18 years registered-nurse experience). Editorially reviewed by David Chen. Last verified 19 June 2026. Hearing-aid clinical questions belong with your audiologist.