Hello everyone,
i got my new FP3+ very recently and soon started to notice a weird hissing noise coming out of the phones speaker on the bottom left side. It is especially noticeable when it plays acoustic music at low volume, voice messages, or when media is played but the volume control is at 0%. The sound can be described as resembling high pitched radio static or the noise when there is too much gain on an audio recording. It is a constant sound that stays as long as there is media played, but you won’t notice it when the volume is very high.
This issue appears on every app that can play media, in the speaker test, and also in safe mode, so i guess it is not due to some third party software that messes with the speakers. The phone runs on the stock OS that came with it and has the latest firmware update (8901.3.A.0084.20210204)
I saw this thread (FP3+ speaker creates a hissing noise) that seemed to describe a similar issue. Can you hear this sound on your phones too? My guess is that it’s just the poor speaker quality and/or missing software support. Still weird tho.
Greetings,
Max
(PS: It is also worth noting that this issue appeared on several other smartphones of my partner that i had tested, although not as clear. So its maybe not fairphone-exclusive.)
I’ve just tried media at zero volume and there’s zero hissing. Official support will ask you to reset the phone especially as you said ‘very recently’ indicating that it may be something that happened by your hands.
If it disappears after a reset then clearly there is an issue with what you may have downloaded.
if not you had better contact support@fairphone.com as soon as possible ~ it may well be a faulty amplifier.
What I should have said before you consider a reset is to uninstall all media apps and see if it occurs just when using hands free.
You ‘should’ also test the speakers via dialling *#*#66#*#*
then using the Service tests > Test single > Speaker; there are two tests. The first test does the bottom hands free speaker, you should here a clear Chinese song.
Today i got my FP3+ replaced after quite some time being in contact with the support. The replacement device has no audible hissing under normal circumstances, so i guess this issue was unique to the model i got.
Still, the audio quality of the speaker is far from good and that in my opinion that makes the device hard to recommend to others. I keep it though, as i can live with it for now.