AirPods Pro, the 'hearing aid' function also arrives in Italia
The news comes as a firmware update to AirPods Pro 2 and 3 users
The function that allows the AirPods Pro 2 and 3 to be used as 'hearing aids' has also arrived in Italia. To activate it, you have to go from your iPhone or iPad, once the earphones are connected, to Settings/AirPods Pro and do a hearing test. You have to put yourself in a quiet room, put on the earphones and answer the prompts on your iPhone. It lasts a few minutes. You can then activate the 'customised hearing profile'.
At the end of the test, the user receives a summary with a value indicating the hearing loss for each ear along with an audiogram. With AirPods Pro, the hearing profile is automatically applied to the audio of calls but also to music, films and games. Italia was among the few European countries lacking this function, which is in addition to the others we talked about in this article, such as "Hearing Protection".
As mentioned above, both the Hearing Test and the 'Hearing Aid' function are available on AirPods Pro 3 and AirPods Pro 2 as a free firmware update. The user does not have to do anything. This is not a real hearing aid, but a solution designed for those with a slight deficit that can be quite disabling. The software solution is regulated and approved in the EU as a Class IIa medical device.
Privacy
With regard to privacy, when the user's device is locked with passcode, Touch ID or Face ID, health and fitness information in the Health app remains encrypted, except for health records. The same applies to data in iCloud backups, which remain encrypted both in transit to the servers and on Apple's servers. When the user uses iOS, iPadOS and watchOS with two-factor authentication set by default and a passcode, the Health app data synchronised to iCloud is protected with end-to-end encryption.
The Studio
A study conducted by the University of Michigan together with Apple on 160,000 participants in the United States has revealed how the AirPods' 'hearing test' and 'hearing aid' can turn hearing health monitoring into a daily activity, similar to checking blood pressure or heart rate.
