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Replacement droid microphone problem?

i got my third droid the other day from my local verizon store - born on date of 48-09. This time i got one brand new instead of one in a white box. No one has complained to me since. This is not a scientific explanation. Maybe people just got tired of giving me a hard time. I have also read that the droid does not deal well with deep voices (i have a very deep voice). I'm not saying that you should go to your local store and demand a new phone if you have had the same exasperating problem as me. Wait, I am. Good luck. Oh, and by the way....Don't throw hissy fits at the Verizon store. If you want to get what you want, be friendly. It will get you a lot farther. Droooiiid!
 
TO ANYONE DEALING WITH BAD SOUND QUALITY>

Please get skype or similar and record your phone's sound quality so we can hear the problem. I believe you can record skype calls with something called Pamela. It would go a long way to helping us to solve your problem.
 
just call verizon and complain until they send you a brand new one even if your out of your 30 days. say you have an extended return policy if you happened to buy november 14 (day before it actually happened) or through december 16th (day after)
 
Motorola has acknowledged hardware problems that cause this. I have the same problem.
My "Droid does" everything EXCEPT make phone calls.
 
I received my "new" Droid today (as speculated by others, it, too, was a re-furbished unit). Unlike others who had success, this unit sounded WORSE than the phone I had. That makes 4 Droids, all with the same "muffled" quality. I called several people and they confirmed. yup. Sounds the same - muffled, like through a pillow.

I don't know what to do. I will try Verizon again and see if they can come up with a replacement or get me a Blackberry again. What amazes me is the staunch assertions by some of those others posting here who insist they have great
 
wow.. you must be a 1/10000000 case because to have gone trough 4 phones and still have the same problem... maybe is the reception? today I was on a call and accidentally pressed mute with my cheek but figured out the next minute and fixed it. It's very weird really.
 
The first Droid I had had a busted mic right out of the box. The second one worked sometimes and sometimes not. I currently have one that works just fine

Funny thing is that when I went out to swap out the second one, there was a guy there that said to me "are you having problems with the mic too?" He was swapping his out as well
 
Not going to play the replacement game with obviously defective hardware or software. What's amazing is the speakerphone quality... it blows away normal mode. As highlighted in other threads/forums, it seems to be an issue with the way the two mics work together. If you cover the 2nd/ambient mic it does sound better. But that's just a proof of concept, not an acceptable workaround. I'll come back to the Droid once it's fixed.
 
i have noticed this with my brand new droid i recieved today so far... i may also be going to a BB if verizon can work something out with me and come back to a droid next yr at some point.
 
I just got my Droid two days ago and the first day people were telling me that they couldnt hear me I sounded like i was muffled and going in and out. Whats the dea?l do i need to take this back? This is a brand new phone people should be able to hear me. I really like the phone so far but this mic thing has to be corrected. Any ideas?
 
same problem here. mic fades in and out intermittently . usually in beginning of the call. people saying hello? tried removing the verizon case but made no difference. the speakerphone works flawlessly however. has to be a software problem, I'm taking it back tomorrow.
 
have another droid coming on the way. oddly enough, phone works fine in speakphone mode, but microphone fails when trying to make regular calls or record video/audio. i factory reset and tried the reprogramming that was suggested. eh... will see if the new one works. im just baffled why it would work fine in speakerphone mode- is it a different mic? if not, its not hardware... and the reset/settings changes mean it isnt software... its just odd.
 
Have any of you tried an external mic? Just as a test.

I can make calls on mine and my mouth can be 2-3 feet away (in the car) and people hear me just fine.
 
I have a deep voice, I have Voice Privacy disabled, and I'm on my 3rd Motorola Droid because the microphone doesn't seem to work for the first 10 -15 seconds. The problem has been identical with all three phones. However the problem doesn't seem to be on every call. I've never noticed the problem on speakerphone, just on regular talking. It seems to be more apparent when I answer an incoming call than when I originate a call. When people call, I say "Hello?" and I get silence. Then I say it again about three or four times and louder each time and eventually they say "Hello" back. Frequently they say, "I can barely hear you." Then after about another 10 seconds I'll ask: "Can you hear me now?" and they say they can hear me better and we start having a normal conversation. I purchased the black protective case and I noticed that it seems to cover the little hole for the microphone. So I cut out a notch with my trusty pocketknife just in the area where the microphone is, but it seems not to have helped at all. One tech I spoke with at Verizon said that it could be the cell towers near where I live have not yet been updated, and he said I should report it by dialing 3 asterisks *** or 3 pound signs ### after each call where I had a problem so they could figure out which towers to update. However, I can never remember to do it. I absolutely love my phone for everything else, but since I run a business off of my phone, I'm reluctant to lose clients over this issue. I'm waiting for the Google Nexus phone to come out on Verizon, and hopefully it will be an improvement over the Motorola device. It's too bad. Up till now Motorola has always been a trustworthy brand with reliable products. Unfortunately, like Toyota, they're not moving quickly enough to address this significant quality problem with something so basic as a microphone.
 
no complaints on my droid and sound quality. my cheek has ended calls though lol. i had a problem with sound through the speaker at the begining though, which ended up being my fault because i had put a protective screen on it and it covered up my ear piece lol so all the clear phone calls i was having ended up getting very muffled by the screen. so keep that in mind to.
 
All you have to do is change some settings on the phone. Here we go:


Enter the programming menu by going to the call screen and entering ##PROGRAM then press send. Enter code 000000.

Once there hit option #04 Vocode and change it to EVRC-B

You should be all set. If issue continues try turning off your Droid by going to the following steps:

settings/Call settings/ Voice Privacy - OFF


Look luck! DROID ROCKS!:)
 
I bought two Moto Droids and mine seems to wok ok but my wifes is haveing this same sound/Mic problem. This issue dates back to 2009. Is there a known solution?
 
Just checking in with the same problem.
Phone purchased 12/22/09
Build Date of 39/09

Noticed last week that no one could hear me on the phone, but assumed it was because I was in an area with bad service (out of state).
The phone(microphone) will only work on speaker phone.
If I try to use the regular phone, or if I try to use the phone with earphones, no one can hear me speak.

My replacement should be here in 2 days, can't wait to see what POS verizon sends me. I've babied this phone since the day I got it, never dropped, never wet, never abused. My last nokia lasted me 4 years with no issues. Bullshit warranty = refurbed phone that someone else has probably abused, or has not taken care of to my standards at the very least.

EDIT: I tried the ##program, I tried the voice privacy, i removed the battery for 30 seconds, I even did the restore factory settings, all with no success.
 
I turned the voice privacy off, which I think is turned on as a factory setting. I also got a case that seemed to block less of the microphone. So far so good. People that I have talked to said it was an improvement but I will have to let you know.:D


ssantan2 said:
do you have voice privacy on? I hear turning that off helps. My friends say they have a hard time hearing me but idk if thats cause of my phone or google voice . . .
Click to expand...
 
GOOD NEWS I HAVE FOUND THE SOLUTION.
thanks to another online forum.
https://supportforums.motorola.com/message/163406#163406

My wife has taken back her phone 4 times now to the store and got another brand new phone and nothing fixed it. This is because all the phones at that store came from the same batch or date manufactured.
Some dates are effected while others are not.

The problem is with the Noise Cancelation Device.
On the back at the top of the phone, above the camera is a little rubber strip cover. This is glued in place but with a thin knife you can easily and carefully remove this.
Behind it is a little metal strip that looks like the strip inside of a bus fuse. This strip spans across a little hole. This is the Noise Cancelation Device. This metal strip vibrates with background noise and tells the phone to cancel it out. The problem is some of them are too sensitive and cancel out your own voice.

The solution is to take a small piece of paper and push it under that metal strip in the hole so that it pushes slightly on the metal strip. This will stop it from being able to vibrate, thus deactivating the Noise Cancelation Device.

You may now here some background noise as if you were on a phone without this feature but you should hear the voice perfectly clear. I just did this this morning and it works perfectly.

Warning. This is probably technically a breach of your warranty. That is the reason for the paper instead of just taking out the metal strip. You can remove the paper before sending the phone in for service or replacement and no one will ever know that you messed with it.

Customer Service and Tech Support from Verizon or Motorolla will not give you any help. They will only replace your phone, and if it is past 30 days they will only give you a refurbished phone. This MAY solve your problem if the phone they give you is from a batch that works, or it may not. But they will not tell you how to fix it, cause they dont want you playing with it, and they wont fix it in the store because then they cant get their money back from motorolla either if they mess it up.

The real problem is that they have not communicated to the CSRs that this is the issue, and only have told them to replace the phone. When you have got 4 phones all with the same problem, the CSRs like anyone else with common sense come to the conclusion that it cant be the hardware and then they have no solution for you.

Verizon and Motorolla need to recall all phones from these batches and anyone who is having this problem should be send a pretested phone from a good batch. OR they should simply release a patch that disables the Noise Reduction Software. Until then a tiny little piece of paper will work.

They were 1.5 hours away from me mailing this back in and going to US Cellular. Good luck everyone.
 
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