Smartphones quality as phones

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DarrisBard

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 1, 2009
Messages
224
Hello all,

I know a lot of people here have a lot of experience with different phones.

I have a hearing impairment and I no longer have a landline phone. Landline phones aren't necessarily great when it comes to sound quality for phone conversations but neither are cell phones better.

I currently use a dumb cell phone but I've been trying to investigate smartphones. It is tough to test them at the store, it is very awkward to hunch over at a display and try to bring your ear close to the speaker.

I like the internet and games stuff (after all that is the advantage of the smartphone over my current phone) but that seems to be all the tech reviews focus on. Even when they talk about sound quality it is usually aimed at speakerphone and video playback etc.

The best option I've seen so far is one hearing aid model that can directly bluetooth sync with an iphone. However it is pretty expensive to get a new pair of hearing aids and locks me into the iphone.

Using my testing method the Sony z3v at Verizon sounded pretty loud but the phone has a lot of negative reviews.

So anyone got phone call quality impressions?

Thanks
 
Motorola is typically the best "phones." They have the best proprietary antennae designs that makes them above all except for maybe Nokia. But Nokia is dead, and I dunno what Microsoft is doing.
 
Not only that, but if all else fails you'll have a MUCH better platform for using SMS than a dumb phone.
 
DarrisBard said:
Hello all,

I know a lot of people here have a lot of experience with different phones.

I have a hearing impairment and I no longer have a landline phone. Landline phones aren't necessarily great when it comes to sound quality for phone conversations but neither are cell phones better.

I currently use a dumb cell phone but I've been trying to investigate smartphones. It is tough to test them at the store, it is very awkward to hunch over at a display and try to bring your ear close to the speaker.

I like the internet and games stuff (after all that is the advantage of the smartphone over my current phone) but that seems to be all the tech reviews focus on. Even when they talk about sound quality it is usually aimed at speakerphone and video playback etc.

The best option I've seen so far is one hearing aid model that can directly bluetooth sync with an iphone. However it is pretty expensive to get a new pair of hearing aids and locks me into the iphone.

Using my testing method the Sony z3v at Verizon sounded pretty loud but the phone has a lot of negative reviews.

So anyone got phone call quality impressions?

Thanks
Click to expand...


Okay question.

Are you more concerned with "quality" or with "loudness/audibility"?

If the former, I'm not really sure what would be a good solution for you.

If the latter, there are numerous types of cell phone sound amplifiers out there.
 
Anything with VoLTE support should be fine. If you need extra loudness, get a phone with front facing speakers (HTC One M9, Moto X Pure, Nexus 6P, Sony Xperia) and put it on speaker phone if you need to, lol.

Not sure how those those bluetooth hearing aids would lock you into iPhone though. Bluetooth is a universal standard and any phone should be able to connect to them.

The best solution would be to get some proper hearing aids though so you don't need a special phone or connection to talk on it.
 
Ok I'll check out Motorola. I think one of my friends has a droid turbo.

The developer of that pair of hearing aids only created an app for iphone.

I'm looking for loud sound. Last year Sprint and Verizon were offering the HTC one m8 for free but I tried it out at the stores and it wasn't great.

I don't know why windows sucks so much on phones but every single person I talk to says don't go that route. I thought they were doing that whole integrate everything windows 10 pc/mobile blah blah. Sticking with windows 7 for now anyway.
 
I'm going to have to say htc due to the speakers. My M8 can be very loud, the M9 is the same design.
 
T4rd said:
Anything with VoLTE support should be fine. If you need extra loudness, get a phone with front facing speakers (HTC One M9, Moto X Pure, Nexus 6P, Sony Xperia) and put it on speaker phone if you need to, lol.

Not sure how those those bluetooth hearing aids would lock you into iPhone though. Bluetooth is a universal standard and any phone should be able to connect to them.

The best solution would be to get some proper hearing aids though so you don't need a special phone or connection to talk on it.
Click to expand...

Once you've had front facing stereo speakers, you never accept anything less.
 
Hearing aids are a little bit like cars. I like to keep them until they break down to the point where it is no longer worth repairing them. Generally that is a 7-year cycle. They cost around 4 or 5 k each time. Right now I'm on year 5 and they are working well so it is too early to jump ship.
 
I don't know, on maximum volume in call my Droid Turbo isn't incredibly loud. You should definitely test whatever you plan to get before committing.
 
I'm trying a Samsung Galaxy S6. The hearing aid mode and the louder volume button hurt my ear. But just using the regular volume all the way up has been working fine. It is comparable to the dumb phone I was using. So far it is ok.

I've learned how to use it and set it up how I want.

My question now is about battery life. When i go to the battery setting is says cell standby 37%. I've read lots of nonsense googling it but I'm sure there is a simple fix. Or am I misunderstanding that menu and that is normal usage?

Thanks for any tips.
 
DarrisBard said:
I'm trying a Samsung Galaxy S6. The hearing aid mode and the louder volume button hurt my ear. But just using the regular volume all the way up has been working fine. It is comparable to the dumb phone I was using. So far it is ok.

I've learned how to use it and set it up how I want.

My question now is about battery life. When i go to the battery setting is says cell standby 37%. I've read lots of nonsense googling it but I'm sure there is a simple fix. Or am I misunderstanding that menu and that is normal usage?

Thanks for any tips.
Click to expand...

It's not an issue unless you're using the phone a lot and it's still that high of a percentage. Something has to be the majority percentage of battery use, so just because something is using 37% of your battery, doesn't mean it's excessive unless it's in a short period of time and/or it's while the screen is off (as is normal for cell standby).

And I'm not sure if this is your first smart phone or not, but keep in mind that these things don't have near the battery life, esp. in standby, as any other dumb phone. Generally as long as the phone lasts a full day (16-18 hours of normal usage), then that's average battery life for a smart phone and for the GS6 from what I've seen on my wife's GS6. So you're going to have to charge it every night basically.
 
It looks like when I turned wifi off that cell standby statistic dropped off the list.

Yes it is my first smartphone so I'm not familiar with a lot of this stuff. My friend at work told me to expect to charge it every night. The s6 charges really fast, it finishes in like an hour with the charger that it came with.
 
DarrisBard said:
Hearing aids are a little bit like cars. I like to keep them until they break down to the point where it is no longer worth repairing them. Generally that is a 7-year cycle. They cost around 4 or 5 k each time. Right now I'm on year 5 and they are working well so it is too early to jump ship.
Click to expand...

Wow, I'd have to imagine that there is a huge jump in quality when you are 'upgrading' every 7 years. What do you expect the quality improvement to be like when you purchase your next hearing aid in a couple of years?
 
Yes there is definitely a jump in quality. I remember at my last upgrade in the same places I was hearing stuff that I just hadn't noticed before. It was a big difference. Having said that I was less impressed with the trial pair I used earlier this year. It was louder but not clearer. Part of the problem is the hearing loss is a hard limiting factor, there is only so much you can do.

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Edit: fixed
 
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You could carry around a little battery powered dac with you and some earbuds and use that to boost the audio coming out of the 3.5mm jack. If you have access to a computer while you are home use google voice through the hangouts apps to make free VOIP calls through your pc, its as good as landline and you can text from your pc at the same time. If your audio from your pc isn't loud enough you could get a sound card (usb dac again maybe the same one you use for the phone or a headphone amp to hook up on the speaker out line) that would boost your pc sound too.

I'm sorry I don't know if that stuff would interfer with your hearing aids I was just trying to throw out some ideas.
 
If you wear non-bluetooth hearing aids, then get a t-coil loop you plug into the phone that directly interacts with the hearing aids. Like this: http://www.amazon.com/CLA7-V2-Ampli...d=1449151147&sr=8-2&keywords=bluetooth+t-coil

If you wear blue-tooth capable hearing aids, then you simply pair the hearing aids to the phone's bluetooth. No special app is needed. The phone treats the hearing aids like any external bluetooth speakers. Battery life is the biggest concern with always-on bluetooth.

If you don't wear hearing aids, and are simply hard-of-hearing, then a loud standard bluetooth headset/earplugs. Or annoy everyone around you by blasting your conversation to everyone over the phone's speaker.. Even better yet, get some hearing aids..
 
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Couple quick things. They use VOIP at my work and it doesn't sound that great to me.

It looks like the hearing aids I tried can work with android phones but only through an intermediary device that you can clip to your belt. The advantage of the iphone is that it streams directly to that hearing aid with no intermediary device.
 
Among all these smartphone brands I think Sony and HTC are the best. I also like Samsung too.
 
Interesting update. I had a meeting with the audiologist who explained that there is something called low power bluetooth that allows the devices to do this streaming without killing battery life.

My audiologist set me up with an intermediary device that works with my current equipment. Definitely a nice feature.
 
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