My voice is too quiet on phone calls with earpiece

By Bingo Little, 6 January, 2022

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi all,

Can anyone help me with a really strange issue? Using the phone app, if I take or make a call and use the earpiece my voice is really, really quiet. Switch to hands free and all is well. whatsApp calls seem to work well too. calls on Airpods Pro work fine too. I have tried resetting network settings, resetting all settings, erasing and restoring from iCloud backup - none of it does any good. I've tested the bottom mic by making a recording or two and that seems to be fine. I'm now clean out of ideas. Using an SE2020 and IOS15.2 and this problem only seems to have come about in the last two or three days. Can anyone help please?

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Comments

By PaulMartz on Monday, January 24, 2022 - 23:38

I had this issue with my old original iPhone SE. It worked fine for several years, then, after upgrading to one of the beta releases, using the phone in handset mode resulted in very low speaker volume. No problem with wired earbuds or speaker/hands-free. Music, audiobooks, etc., did not experience any issues. I never found a solution, upgraded to an iPhone X to get rid of the problem. I'm now on the new iPhone SE and it also works fine.

I did a lot of web searching and tried a lot of things to resolve the issue on my old phone. Lots of people in discussion forums experienced similar problems. No one had a solution, if I remember correctly. But you might try a full reset and restore from backup. Good luck, and let us know if you find a fix, because I don't think we've seen the end of problems like this.

By Bingo Little on Monday, January 24, 2022 - 23:38

Thanks for your feedback. Good to know I'm not the only one though obviously only good to that extent and I'm sorry you had similar issues. I've tried every reset you can think of. I also phoned Apple Support and they had me test the front mic on the iPhone by recording a video with the front-facing camera and then one with the back-facing camera. That all worked splendidly. Apple support were then out of ideas. I am going along on Monday to the store to see what they make of it. Sounds like I'll be wasting my time though.

My fiancee tells me she also has the same issue. She has an iPhone 8 though. Perhaps I'll just have to get used to hands free/airpods for the next few months until, I hope, the 14 complete with Touch ID comes out.

By Chad on Monday, January 24, 2022 - 23:38

Try cleaning the earpiece?