Loud environments work fine for me.
Hi everybody,
Is there any way to fix the microphone quality problem ?
Another call app than the stock one, could it be possible ?
I can’t use this phone if I can’t use it as a phone, all the more as it’s for a professionnal use…
Thank anybody who can help me to seeing clear in the matter…
Welcome to the community forum 
Could you provide more information on your use case such as
- current os build number
If your problem is limited to phone calls
- which phone app are you using
- is the problem worse or better when using speakerphone
- do you use other apps for calls such as Signal or WA
If your problem extends to recording,
- which apps you use (and whether you notice any difference)
- what sorts of sound (chamber music, loud rock, nature, conversation, public speaker etc.)
- ambient acoustic conditions
Hi There! Loving the phone but I’ve got the same issue as many, in my case:
New Fairphone 6 with e/OS 3.2 (latest official build)
The audio issues are pretty bad on audio calls via internet (messaging apps), but seems unaffected or less problematic on regular network calls. It’s not limited to any app: whatsapp, signal etc all have the issue. The signal coming out from the internal mic in calls (or recorded messages) gets REALLY compressed, so people on the other end hear a signal where breaths and loud talking is equal in level. It’s then percieved as ‘distorted’ which it’s in fact super loud/compressed
If the conditions are very noisy, the compression is even more noticeable.
This still occurs with quality bluetooth headphones.
To make a phone call on WA/Signal, I go to a very quiet place, put it on loudspeaker and try speak extremely quietly so they can hear me without as much compression.
Separately, on the receiving end I hear others actually distorted (audio clipping) especially when the signal is stronger on their mic or someone is talking loudly.
I’m aware that some tweaks were made to mitigate quiet levels in the OS’s code some months ago… Could this ramping up of audio signal now be causing the distortion on the calls coming in or compression on the internal mic?
The fact that I can’t fix it with external mics/bluetooth makes phonecalls extremely difficult to make, so i’d say this is a pretty critical bug.
If I can provide any more info please let me know and thanks in advance
Just updated to 3.3, no improvements. Audio in videos is terrible…
Is this a hardware issue, so I shouldn’t expect any fix?
It is totally unacceptable that a $600 phone is unable to record sound at a higher volume, unlike phones that cost a fraction of the price. It is even more shocking that this problem has existed for at least 4 Fairphone versions. What is particularly outrageous is that Fairphone claims to be able to replace and repair all parts at an affordable price. So why has this problem not been solved long ago?
This is a video from last weekend. If you listen carefully, you will even notice that the terrible sound is not in stereo, but in mono…
Just a reminder to all:
- Please state your OS version and which apps and options you are using. This thread contains contributions from users of both FPOS and /e/ and the problems reported could be sw or* hw based.
- Please also read from the top, you may find suggestions worth following.
*- Edit 2026-02-11
I have a new Fairphone 6 and yesterday I recorded some videos with music louder than normal, but not a concert. I was shocked by how bad it was: completely distorted, like columns bursting. It didn’t happen to me since my 2008 Nokia.
I paid 600€ for a phone that can’t record louder sounds? And from what I have been reading it is a known issue from previous Fariphone models, which is even more mindblowing.
This is just not acceptable.
Just got my new Fairphone 6 and installed e/OS on it. I’m a filmer, in holiday and filmed all day with it. I’m impressed by the camera quality! In the evening I watched the Videos with headphones and was totally shocked. The images are amazing but the one sided sounds which the microphone recorded are absolutely horrible and totally unusable!!! How can that be? Are this devices not getting tested first? Did somebody try to attache an external usb-c microphone? Is the sound better then?
Hey Guys whats up. Read all your Stuff and i kinda bought a refurbished iphone 2.gen from 2020 for 80 bucks for concerts and events today. i do music but i didn’t bought the fp6 (with eOS) to record in high quality or whatsoever. Just usual videos with okayish sounds. I’m a DJ so sounds often are distored in clubs but i must tell you guys -
The microphone is worse then my latest phone. I upgraded from OnePlus Nord CE from 2021 and the quality of the mic was bad, but a new phone from 2025 did manage it to excel this performance 
.
But enough with the chit-chat, i do recommend the phone itself and i wouldn’t send it back because of that. You guys helped me realize its not (or at least not only) hardware related, so i still support fairphone and murena and i hope for a most needed update in the (near) future.
cheers guys, enjoy your sunday.
Of course I do. That’s the idea of a smartphone: Being ready to record an event. Of course not expecting professional results, but to get those, I have to carry professional (i.e. heavy and bulky) equipment. Smartphone are invented to be able to seize the oportunity.
In /e/ 3.5 still completely unusable. Like they never ever tested this in real world situations. 
3.6. now - and still unusable.
The bad mic is NOT a product of lack of funds for R&D or engineerig. It’s lack of understanding the customer and his/her “use case” and not listening to previous complaints.
Quick test after updating to A16:
I can finally use other apps than the stock camera app to record videos with usable sound!
No extensive tests yet, but my voice in IG stories is actually understandable for the first time since I got the phone…
I have made my first recording in loud environment (dance school) yesterday with Blackmagic. The dance school is not as loud as a disco or a live concert, but louder than average it is. I could successfully record with Settings | Audio | Audio source = ‘Smartphone microphone’ and Smartphone microphone = ‘Smartphone microphone (2)’ and attenuating, depending on the music played, between 95% and at max 40% on louder songs.
So, in a nutshell, Fairphones audio disaster can be cured by manipulating the preamp. But this comes with a drawback: Now that the audio is no longer clipped, this reveals how truly bad the quality of Fairphone’s microphones is. The audio is, not surprisingly (given the size restrictions in a smartphone), very thin, lacks details and bass as well.
It is obvious that human speech was the only criterion for selecting a microphone, as human speech “centers” in the frequency spectrum of audio or music
So, audio will need post production, but at least we now get a non-distorted recording.
That said, it has not yet been proven to work at disco or live concert volume. But the slider in Blackmagic can be pulled down to a minimum of 1% (unfortunately the slider does not use dezibels als units, but percentage, so actually it is not an attenuator but a level control), this could be sufficient but has yet to prove that.
Next problem is that all apps that do not tamper with the preamp cannot benefit from this finding. Dancetime for instance. That is an app that listens to music being played in the room and indicates to you the beats that it detects. Not tampering with the preamp this app will get the totally distorted audio that we all have witnessed in video recordings, so not surprisingly Dancetime complains about not being able to find any beat at all
So still, Fairphone, if you read this, we urgently need a fix for the disaster. Either by curing all drivers or by introducing a user selectable attenuator. /e/ Foundation, if you read this, this could be the moment were /e/ becomes better than Android, because you have the opportunity to fill in a shortcoming of the device manufacturer.
Yes, it’s still far from great.
However, when I got the phone last July, I use a gcam port to record scenes at a kid’s summer camp. People singing at a campfire. You couldn’t even hear anything except for a very compressed muddy mess at a very low level. Complete garbage. And not just with gcam, same when taking a video on signal (back when the camera worked in signal which is another issue) or making insta stories - you couldn’t even hear me talking to the camera.
For these use cases it’s now actually usable. Not perfect, but usable. I highly doubt we will ever get production level audio from a smartphone, and I personally don’t expect it.
I got a similar output when using OpenCamera. It bypasses part of Fairphone’s default audio processing, but as you said, while the audio is no longer distorted, it is still very low quality, muffled, and lacking resolution and clarity (and also very low on volume too).
I started my first support request with Fairphone in early 2025 to report the microphone issue, and I also flagged the numerous posts in this community. But even after more than a year, it seems that no update has been released to properly address the problem, and the FP6 is sharing the same issue.
I am also wondering, and maybe you or someone else can help clarify this point: when using a Bluetooth headset microphone, does the audio still go through Fairphone’s audio processing (e.g. noise suppression or gain control), which could result in a similarly muffled sound? I recently bought a new pair of headphones, but I feel that my voice messages and call audio are still affected in a very similar way.
thanks!
With Blackmagic the sound is not low in volume. You can freely adjust the volume so that only seldomly peaks hit -5 dB or so (for doing so you can switch the VU meter into a peak meter, i.e. peaks stay on the screen for a couple of seconds longer). In BM you can connect directly to USB sources. I tested the connection does get established, but not the quality of the output. So far. Will do.
Sorry, I do not know whether or whether not BT audio goes through the postprocessing. But, that said, yesterday I recorded a video (again using Blackmagic) in my dance school, but this time with a Bluetooth microphone (Neewer KM23B, available for little money on Amazon. It is a tiny Lavalier type microphone that you simply put on your shirt with a clip. Has wind protection (the “dead cat type” 
), and a built-in battery that lasts several hours and recharges via USB-C). The audio was clear, undistorted, and -compared to the built-in microphones of the FP6- did have bass… Not very much (to be expected given the size, probably the mic inside is just as “big” as the two in the FP6), but I think this could be corrected in manual postprocessing, but I did not have the time to test that, too.
For anyone interested in details, the mic was selectable (by name!) in Settings | Audio | Audio source, I set the mic at 80% using Blackmagic’s gain control, so the music was mainly at -15–10 dB, music peaks were at max at -5 dB (only the dance instructor went up to -1 dB, but he is still clear on the recording). I sampled with 48 kHz.
The only shortcoming of the Neewer is that it is mono (just like the FP audio). But it gives better results than the built-in mics, it is really lightweight (you can carry it all night long and even dance while wearing it). This mic does not need a separate transmitter nor a separate receiver, it directly talks BT to the phone. The FP6 will tell you the battery level of the microphone, so don’t worry to run out of power.