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Android is making it easier to connect a hearing aid to your phone (APK teardown)
- Google Fast Pair appears to be working on support for Bluetooth-compatible hearing aids.
- This would build upon Android 15 improvements, including support for Audio Streaming for Hearing Aids (ASHA).
- Fast Pair also shows signs of progress towards supporting Bluetooth keyboards.
Technology has always played a big role in helping people who need a little hearing assistance, and that’s only kicked into high gear over the course of the past decade or so. Government regulators have lowered the bar for access to hearing aids, and the ubiquitous nature of Bluetooth support has made it simple to connect regular old headphones to pretty much whatever audio source you can think of. Right now we’re checking out what could be one of next ways Android tries to make life just a little easier for people who use hearing aids.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
This year’s release of Android 15 delivers some big improvements to hearing aid compatibility, supporting both Bluetooth LE Audio (LEA) and Audio Streaming for Hearing Aids (ASHA) protocols. But that could be just the tip of the iceberg here, and as were poking around the new Google Play Services 24.50.32 beta, we spotted some references to a new feature that appears to be in development for hearing aid hardware.
Google Fast Pair makes it a cinch to set up our favorite Bluetooth accessories, working with everything from speakers to game controllers. And while Bluetooth earbuds are obviously supported, this new class of Bluetooth LEA-compatible hearing aids is technically a different category of device, one not yet part of Fast Pair. At least, that’s been the case so far, but in this latest Play Services beta we find a new fast_pair_enable_hearing_aid_pairing setting and the presence of a “HEARING_AID” class among valid Fast Pair devices, as you can see above.
There’s another new addition on that list that might sound a little familiar if you’ve been following our coverage of in-development Fast Pair support, as we now see Bluetooth keyboards on there, as well. We’ve already been anticipating Chrome OS Fast Pair keyboard support, but this may be the first evidence we’ve uncovered for it on Android.
So far we haven’t been able to identify any actual hearing aid hardware that’s available with this Fast Pair support just yet, but with the framework only now falling into place, it may just be a matter of time before such devices start arriving.