Help Caller on other end hears echos

[space_cat]

My phone has developed a problem this week where everyone I talk to hears a bad echo of themselves when speaking to me. The sound is fine for me, but they are aggravated by the echoing of their own voices. It happens both when they're on a mobile phone or on a landline.

This started around the time I was having a conversation in the rain, and the phone got pretty wet. I've blown out the mic on the phone, but can't think of much else to do to it other than that.

I still have 4.0.4 and am rooted. I powered off and pulled battery and the problem persists.

I've googled and found a few similar problems on other phones, but wanted to run it by you before attempting warranty claim gymnastics.

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.

 

[rjglenn]

before attempting warranty claim gymnastics.

No idea, but I'd leave the part about being in the rain or any thing about water while on the phone with VZW.

Have you put it in a bag of rice yet?

 

[space_cat]

Soooo, after much research, this echo problem is not just related to my particular phone. Some people have had issues when they put a case on their phones (other models) for example. In some cases people have removed their cases, or drilled holes in their cases where there is a small external mike. Others have turned off noise reduction from within calls and temporarily fixed the problem. Both of those issues have to do with a small external mic being blocked and causing the phones software to compensate in some way.

Our phone has a 'Voice Privacy' that defaults to ON, and is the closest thing to noise reduction I could find. Toggling it did nothing for me. I don't have a case to alter or remove. Blowing out all the sensor holes did nothing either-not even sure if one of those is a mic or just proximity, thermometer, barometer, etc. Talking to VZW was useless because they wanted to trouble shoot the phone before warrantying it, and required me to get on another phone while they trouble shoot. At the time I didn't have access to another phone, so I decided to go into the Verizon store and deal with those guys, who are helpful generally, but it can take some time to go to the storeand deal with the problem, and I was rooted which made me not want to get shot down by them for that.

Anyway, I ended up Factory Resetting the phone from within the OS and magically the problem disappeared. Not sure if it was software I installed that caused the problem(though I removed everything non-factory and the problem persisted.) Also, if on speakerphone, the problem was not present. In the end the factory reset is what worked, for whatever reason, at least for now. Pain in the ass, but at least my friends and business associates aren't shunning me because they hate to talk to my screwed up phone. Hopefully the fix sticks, and I'm unsettled by what caused it in the first place...

Just wanted to document this in case anybody else experiences it...