It’s unfortunate, but several people experience hearing loss at some point in their lives. It can make life harder, but tech companies have made certain advancements that make life easier. According to a new report, Android could make its hearing aid support even better with Fast Pair.
Remember the dog days when adding a new Bluetooth device always required you to go into your Bluetooth settings? It was a tedious process, but Android introduced Fast Pair a couple of years ago. With this feature, your phone will detect when a device is available to pair. Once it does, you’ll see a panel rise from the bottom of the screen with a Connect button. Tapping on that button will automatically pair your phone to the device. It really takes the annoyance out of pairing your Bluetooth devices.
Android could bring Fast Pair to hearing aids
One thing to note is that this feature was spotted as part of an APK deep-dive. The folks at Android Authority in collaboration with AssembleDebug found code pointing to this feature within the Google Play Services (Version 24.50.32 beta). As such, it’s not a sure thing. Google could yank this code at any moment, so you’ll want to take it with a grain of salt.
Android devices have had the ability to connect to hearing aids for some time, but these devices haven’t gotten as much love as recreational earbuds. As such, you can’t connect them to your device using Fast Pair. That’s a bummer, as many of the people who use hearing aids are older. It’s better that the setup process be as quick and easy as possible.
The thing is that there a several Bluetooth device categories like wearables, speakers, headphones, TWS earbuds, Android TV devices, Chrome OS devices, computer mice, keyboards, printers, styli, and many more. Hearing Aids are in their own category, and Google just hasn’t added Fast Pair support to this category yet.
However, it looks like Google wants to change that. According to the source, the Google Play Services app has the setting fast_pair_enable_hearing_aid_pairing under the HEARING_AID category. This points to the feature along with the screenshot below. The screenshot shows a list of the compatible Fast Pair devices.
At this point, there’s no telling when/if Google will release this feature. Hopefully, it does, as it could make Android a much more inclusive platform.
