iPhone SE 2020 microphone issues

By Leela, 15 September, 2024

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

I am having a strange issue all of a sudden with my phone. My microphone refuses to record my voice at all. The only place it works is dictation. I tried recording a video, and it recorded voiceOver but not my voice. I tried an audio message, the same thing happened. No one can hear me on calls, most of the time, but sometimes they can hear me fine. I tried cleaning everything out, and it worked for a while, but now it seems that's not working either. Yet, when I used dictation, it was accurate and heard me correctly. I'm thinking it's time to get me a new phone, but this is very odd. Wondering if anyone else experienced this before?

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Comments

By Timothy Wynn on Tuesday, September 17, 2024 - 14:18

The iPhone SE has three microphones: Bottom, front, and back (source):

  • Bottom mic: - Regular phone calls and FaceTime audio calls - Voice memos
  • Front mic:: FaceTime video calls - Front camera video recording - Siri - Speaker phone
  • Back mic:: Phone call noise cancellation - Videos taken with the rear camera - FaceTime video calls when using the rear camera - Siri and speakerphone when the phone is facing down

If you wanted to hear each of those mics individually, download, for example, the TwistedWave Recorder, and if you record in mono, you can switch on Monitor and change input sources.

By Leela on Tuesday, September 17, 2024 - 14:18

Thanks for the tip. That's worth a try

By Brian on Tuesday, September 17, 2024 - 14:18

Also, have you tried disabling Bluetooth while troubleshooting? There is a small possibility another speech input source is taking over the internal mics.

Just a thought... 🙂