FP4 system update broke top speaker

Help Fairphone 4
1

Hello

After a recent software update my top speaker seems bugged. The phone seems to be unable to identify whether it is held in hand or next to my ear. Also, the start of voice messages (Whatsapp etc.) is always sketchy, almost like the speaker needs to sort itself first.
Same for calls and other apps that use audio.

Is someone else experiencing the same or has a fix for the issue?

2

I’m seeing exactly this on my end as well, and it has been going on for a while, so I thought I’d add my observations here rather than open a parallel thread.

@yvmuell @Meaghan sorry for the ping, but would it make sense to retitle this topic to something more descriptive, e.g. “FP4 (Android 15): voice message playback flips between earpiece and loudspeaker for the first seconds”? The current title points at a hardware fault, and from what I can tell the top speaker itself is fine, so people searching for the actual symptom are unlikely to find this thread.

My device details:

  • Fairphone 4
  • Android version: 15
  • Build number: FP4.SREL.15.19.2
  • Android security update: 5 August 2026
  • Google Play system update: 1 July 2026
  • Kernel: 4.19.325-cip132-st16-perf+ (#1, 22 May 2026)
  • Baseband: MPSS.HI.2.5.1.c4-00021-BITRA_GEN_PACK-1
  • Stock software, no root

Symptoms

When I play a voice message in WhatsApp or Signal and bring the phone to my ear, the audio output flips repeatedly between the earpiece and the loudspeaker for the first few seconds of playback. The beginning of the message is then unintelligible.

From repeated trials:

  1. Holding the phone pressed firmly against my ear from the very start of playback does not help. The stuttering still lasts a few seconds before the output settles.
  2. Once it has settled, it is stable. I can then move the phone a few millimetres away from my ear and the audio stays where it is, without flipping again.
  3. So the problem seems bounded in time, not in distance. Holding the phone closer, harder or more still does not prevent it.
  4. In Signal, the settled state is wrong: the audio ends up coming out of the earpiece and the loudspeaker at the same time.
  5. If I never bring the phone to my ear and just listen on the loudspeaker, everything is fine.
  6. It happens in both WhatsApp and Signal (even if the final “stable” outcome is different between them), so it does not look app-specific.

What I have already tested

  • Bluetooth switched off completely: exactly the same behaviour.
  • Bluetooth on with a headset connected: playback goes to the headset and there is no glitch at all. The problem only shows up on the internal routing path.
  • I am on the current public build, so there is no pending update on my side that might already contain a fix.

Brief speculation, for whoever ends up looking at this

Since the problem seems bounded in time rather than in distance, and Signal ends up driving both transducers at once, my guess is that this sits in the audio routing rather than in the sensor or the speakers. I’ll leave the actual diagnosis to the people who can look inside.

There seem to be earlier reports in the same family from the Android 15 rollout:

I’m comfortable with adb and happy to capture a logcat trace of the routing calls during a reproduction if that would help. Is anyone else seeing this on 15.19.2?

3

As you are not the OP and we dont know if its the same issue I am not in favour of changing it for now. I would rather merge your post to previous topics when the are the same as yours. So you are using hearing aids?

4

No, just regular headphones.

The issue comes when I don’t use them, of course, when I’m with my “naked ears”.
I’m now running the hardware check to open a ticket as well.