Distorted earpiece

[garyfritz]

Suddenly a week or two ago, my RAZR M's earpiece started sounding really distorted -- bad enough that it's often hard to understand people. Before that, it was always quite clear, then overnight it got really distorted.

It sounds like it's overloading, but it still sounds bad even with the volume turned down.

Speakerphone sounds fine, so the signal it's getting is OK. The problem seems to be in the earpiece itself.

Any guesses what might cause this, and how I could fix it?

 

[Thom]

Hardware seems likely. Water damage? Dropped it and it got damaged?

I suggest you get it evaluated by your carrier or a repair facility.

... Thom

 

[garyfritz]

No water, no droppage or other stressors that I know of.

The phone is over a year old. I'm sure they would just tell me "No problems, we have lots of new ones you can buy."

 

[Thom]

... or have it repaired by a third-party if you so choose.

The first step is to make sure that it is a hardware failure.

... Thom

 

[garyfritz]

Any suggestion for ways to determine if it's hardware, short of taking it to a repair facility? I figured "earpiece sounds bad, speaker sounds good" was a pretty good indication. I should verify with a plug-in headset.

 

[decraig2000]

http://androidforums.com/motorola-d...ad-cannot-understand-phone-conversations.html

Mine does it too. I figured out that it gets small particles of dirt under the Motorola tag over the ear piece. I found that if I blow it out every couple weeks (yes using my mouth) it removes the rattly sound.

 

[garyfritz]

Perfect! Just the sort of info I was looking for. Mine doesn't sound "gravelly" like yours did, but maybe it's just different cruft in there.

Did you end up removing the Motorola label to clean behind it? Can you put it back once you pry it off?

Right now I'm in Canada, outside Verizon range, so I'm not using the phone per se. I have no way to play a sound through the earpiece instead of the speaker. I'll try this when I get home.


This is kind of similar to another problem I had with the USB port. Always had a problem with the USB cable falling out if you bumped or moved the phone at all. Finally I went in there with a needle and discovered a bunch of lint had gotten jammed in there and packed into the bottom of the socket. It wasn't visible but it prevented the cable from seating properly.

 

[garyfritz]

FYI: I tried hitting it with some compressed air and that didn't help.

I happened to be at the Verizon store so I asked them about it. The agent said "Hm, sounds like it's probably a bad solder joint. Let's replace it under warranty." I said nice thought, but it's over a year old. She checked my account and said "Ah, but you have the extended warranty!"

So I'm getting a brand-new phone out of the deal. Gotta love that.

 

[BRAINZ2013]

See that but it may have been a drop of sweat from your ear into the ear piece electric and water don't mix .

 

[garyfritz]

Anything's possible I suppose, but that seems unlikely. I really don't have sweaty ears but also I would expect moisture-caused corrosion to degrade slowly. This was literally overnight, bam -- garbled. Cruft in the earpiece made sense, but compressed air didn't touch it.

 

[BRAINZ2013]

True it maybe but your ear don't need to sweat but your head or even your neighborhood weather forecast may have contribute to this and you may have sat it in water .but to keep from going on in the future tiger direct aka comp USA sell good cheap Bluetooths

 

[rsisley]

FYI: I tried hitting it with some compressed air and that didn't help.

I happened to be at the Verizon store so I asked them about it. The agent said "Hm, sounds like it's probably a bad solder joint. Let's replace it under warranty." I said nice thought, but it's over a year old. She checked my account and said "Ah, but you have the extended warranty!"

So I'm getting a brand-new phone out of the deal. Gotta love that.

Don't count on the phone being "brand-new". More likely a refurbished one. If it is a new one, hats off to you.

 

[garyfritz]

Good point, it will probably be refurbed. But that's still an improvement if the earpiece works.

 

[teddyearp]

If it's refurbed, double check the system build on it to see if it's been upgraded to the last few where they closed the bootloader unlock exploit . . .

 

[garyfritz]

If it's refurbed, it's very clean.

System version is 98.30.1.XT907.Verizon.e.US.
Kernel build is dated Sep 26 2013.
Build number 9.8.1Q-94-1

That's after the July release of the boot-unlocker patch, so that door is apparently closed. But I wasn't really planning on using it anyway.

 

[The Devil Boy]

This is actually the second time I've faced this problem: suddenly the sound on my wired Sony earbuds+headset sounds very badly distorted, which is baffling because 1.) the same headset sounded fine yesterday and still sounds fine today plugged into my computer, and 2.) my computer speakers play the audio just fine plugged into the headset jack of my HTC One M7 running Android 4.4.2. Maddening.

But what's really driving me bats is that the last time this happened, I ran across a simple solution online about a change in the labyrinthine web of settings on my phone. I even remember thinking at the time "what a relief that this is so simple to fix...but I never would've found this setting if someone hadn't specified it online." Guess I was right about that :/

 

[The Devil Boy]

Here we go: it's not the simpler method I found before, but the result is the same. The pre-amp in the OS is wrongly configured to push the headphones with the same power as the main phone speaker, which distorts the crap out of the signal going to the headphones. If your phone is rooted you can get the free Root Browser app and change the power setting from 67 to 16 in the sound_mfg.txt file and you're good to go. Detailed instructions here:

http://www.davebennett.tv/android-boost-speaker-volume/