The "Live Listen" Feature in iOS Could One Day Replace Hearing Aids
Last week I saw this 9to5mac article from Filipe Espósito describing the new real-time audio level Control Center tile in the iOS 14 developer beta. I immediately went to check out this nifty feature on my own iPhone (also running iOS 14), and discovered an additional feature within this Control Center tile: “Live Listen”. At first I thought I had discovered another new addition in iOS 14 — but as it turns out, this feature has been available since iOS 12.
With a “compatible audio device” (AirPods Pro, in my case), Live Listen uses your iPhone’s speaker to capture the audio in your environment, process it noticeably, and reroute it to your AirPods Pro with the ability to adjust the volume. This feature was able to significantly amplify both the sound of my TV and my wife talking in another room.
When the AirPods Pro were released with both noise cancellation and the magic of Transparency Mode, many (myself included) speculated that Apple was just getting started in the “augmented reality” space — and my belated discovery of this years-old augmented audio feature is only more evidence of that fact. According to the AARP, the average price of a single hearing aid is $2,300 (that’s $4,600 for a pair!), but an iPhone SE and a pair of AirPods could be as affordable as $500 for the hard-of-hearing in need of auditory augmentation.