Call partner can hear himself even if not handsfree

[couldHaveBeenGreat]

Hi community,

so I’m aware of the horrible call quality overall. In my case voice quality of my own is great except the part where call partners can hear themselves distorted and 1 second off. Varies over time, sometime no problem at all, sometime they can hear themselves nearly clear just with a slight time delay.
But this is understandable up to a certain part since it is handsfree and the call partners voice has to be filtered. (So a problem with background noise cancellation)

However, while talking the regular way with the phone to my ear, my call partner (via WhatsApp or regular network) can still hear an echo of himself. And this does make no sense to me, since speaker and microphone should be clearly seperated from each another.

I searched a bit, but couldnt find something similar, and since it is not about the quality itself I decided to create a new post.
Did someone else experience this? Any fixes? Or is my device maybe faulty.

[anon9989719]

Hi and welcome to the forum

@couldHaveBeenGreat

I searched a bit, but couldnt find something similar . . . .
Did someone else experience this? Any fixes? Or is my device maybe faulty.

I doubt there are any simple fixes, as you note you couldn’t find another case.

So to start:

• This only happens with hands free ?
• did this happen before you installed any apps. i.e. did hands free on normal call work?

[couldHaveBeenGreat]

Seems like my wording was a bit off since I’m not a native speaker.

This topic was meant to adress the echo hearing while usual talking with no handsfree since it does make no sense, at least for me. (The other part with bad overall microphone quality (on handsfree) seems to be well adressed in this forum already)

So back to questions: it occurs no matter the app we tested to make the call. Switched the other end device as well, no result. Interestingly its the same as with the microquality bug… somedays it’s bad and on other days no such problem. (Always talking in the same rooms with same signal).
Phone has been set up new a few weeks ago, so now data transfer whatsoever. Other Apps have been installed, but nothin fancy.

[UPPERCASE]

Sounds like the issue below, which has to do with poor noise cancellation or even using the wrong mics in some apps. Still not fixed in full.

Call quality and noise cancellation (regular calls, handsfree, Signal voice messages, Microsoft Teams video calls)

I noticed that the call quality of the other end of the connection is not great (using 4G and WiFi calling, all not great). The voice quality send by the Fairphone is a bit robotic and includes some digital noise and too much noise of the surrounding environment. It’s usable, but it’s noticeable of low quality. This is in particular a problem with (video) calls when the loudspeaker is on. When the person on the other end talks, there is a clicking sound because of an echo feedback loop. Using S…

[couldHaveBeenGreat]

Ok, so let’s say it has to do with this, but why would this lead to the other person hearing themself eventhough i’m not using a loudspeaker? I get that my voice can be bad or they can hear an echo and/ or other sound bugs while using a loudspeaker, since my mic has to filter something out and does a bad job with it.

But I dont get, how my microfone seems to pick up their voice while I’m doing a regular call with the phone to my head. The speaker is not that loud, that the microphone could pickup this sound. This is the point I struggle to understand. Maybe someone can explain/ evaluate