Nachrichten
Updating to Phonak Infinio Ultra: Big Changes at Little or No Cost
I updated my Phonak Infinio Sphere hearing aids to Infinio Ultra. Here's what to expect.)
Veröffentlicht am Dec 2, 2025
:format(webp))
Phonak launched the groundbreaking Audeo Infinio Sphere last year, and for anyone who—like me—suffers from severe to profound hearing loss, they have proven to be an AI-powered lifeline to family, friends, and the wider world.
Now Phonak has released the Audeo Infinio (Ultra) Sphere, and it left me with a nagging question: Did I buy a hearing aid that was already obsolete? It turns out the short answer is “no.”
That’s because the hardware hasn’t changed. What is new is the software / firmware that drives the chipset. Unlike the small, incremental updates I was used to, Ultra represents a full redesign of the electronic architecture, including its AI-driven Deep Neural Network (DNN). It is virtually—in the true sense of that word—a new hearing aid.
The download package is free and only takes six or seven minutes in your hearing aid specialist’s or audiologist’s office to install, although Phonak has left it up to them to decide whether to charge for the service. When you walk out, you are essentially wearing new hearing aids in terms of the sound processing.
Ultra was made available to existing Audeo Infinio Sphere users on November 2, 2025 and I have had a couple of weeks to check it out. Here are a few of the features that stood out to me.
The biggest and most obvious difference to me is battery life. I used to occasionally suffer from battery anxiety at the end of a long day when I had used the Spheric AI mode for extended periods.
The original iteration of Spheric Speech Clarity, the DNN that pulls speech out of background noise, did a great job but was power-hungry. In fact, the relatively short battery life was virtually the only criticism I heard at the time.
Now, Spheric Speech Clarity 2.0 is here and is part of the Ultra package. The rewritten software does the same job, pulling speech out of background noise, but it draws much less power. Phonak says it operates 30% more efficiently and you can get up to 56 hours of battery life. I can’t vouch for those numbers, but I can say that even after a long day with hours of using the Spheric AI mode, there is plenty of juice left in them.
For example, on a fairly typical day, I put them on at 6 AM. There was a dinner party where I switched over to “Spheric” mode, but for the most part, they were on the “Automatic” setting. At midnight, just before I turned them off, the app told me I had 28% battery life left in the right one and 32% in the left. That 4% discrepancy is not surprising since the right-side handles Bluetooth Classic and does much of the heavy lifting.
In sum, I can say that Ultra has relieved my battery anxiety.
Also included with Ultra is a new iteration of AutoSense, upgraded from version 6.0 to 7.0. AutoSense classifies sounds and it too uses a form of AI. Essentially, it listens to what you’re listening to, analyses the environment, and then decides whether you’re listening to speech in a quiet room, for example, or if you’re in a noisy place. It responds by automatically selecting the appropriate mode for that environment.
I can’t say I have noticed if this upgrade is making those changes more efficiently, but perhaps that is the point.
:format(webp))
The other significant innovation is that Ultra promises better directionality by combining the DNN AI with directional processing of the microphones’ signals.
This is apparent to me when I am out for a walk. Motion sensors prioritize spatial awareness, so you can hear a car approaching from behind, for example, which makes sense from a safety perspective. But you also want to hear your companion. Ultra uses microphone directionality to find and focus on their voice and blends in DNN to denoise it.
I have noticed that I am able to hear my wife’s speech more clearly when out for a stroll now and that I am still able to hear the environment all around me.
As anyone with a smartphone or a computer knows, software updates are delivered fairly regularly. Since they are, for the most part, backwards compatible, it’s relatively simple to update software on older devices. But hearing aids are different, as Michael Pruess, Phonak’s Senior Audiology Manager, points out.
“Unlike phones and computers, our hearing aids are medical devices and subject to regulatory oversight. Whenever we want to make something backwards-compatible, it requires additional verification—and may require entirely new regulatory documentation. So it’s not that straightforward, unfortunately.”
There will undoubtedly be more firmware updates, but these will likely be for bug fixes and performance improvement tweaks. So they may not be as comprehensive as Ultra.
The good news is that hearing aid technology is evolving at an accelerating pace. Ultra, for example, appears to be an industry first: a “new” hearing aid inside an older one. The update is backwards compatible with the "original" Infinio.
The increasing complexity of all hearing aids, especially prescription devices, and the cascade of innovation and improvements mean your relationship with your hearing care provider is now more important than ever.
On a personal note, that’s something I know firsthand, and a tip of the hat to Edmond Ayvazyan, who keeps me up to date and informed.
Digby Cook ist ein erfahrener Journalist mit umfangreicher Erfahrung in Fernsehnachrichten, Dokumentationen und Zeitungen. Als Person mit schwerem bis tiefem Hörverlust ist sein Interesse an der Wissenschaft des Hörens sowohl beruflich als auch persönlich.
