Using Fairphone 5 in America on the east coast on Mint Mobile. When the phone is first turned on and the factory installed Android call app is used to make a regular phone call by dialing a phone number and then placing the phone up to ones head, the mic at the bottom of the phone does not work. You can hear the person answer and say hello a few times, but they don’t hear you. So if you quickly turn on the speaker phone they will hear you. At that point you can turn off the speaker phone and put the phone back up to your head and the bottom mic is still working. It will be fine the rest of the day to make many calls without having to use the speaker phone to activate the mic to work. But if you turn off the phone, the next time you turn it on you have to do the same procedure. I have been doing this since I got my phone in January of 2025. But if you turn the phone on and do a voice to text message in the factory installed Android text messenger app the bottom mic works fine from start up without needing speaker phone activation first. So Fairphone can you please contact the makers of the phone app and work with them, and even Mint Mobile (T-Mobile), to make their app work correctly with your hardware after initial startup of your phone because I really love your phone but it is a little annoying. This problem does exist, most likely a compatibility issue between software and hardware and not a defect in the phone itself. Yes I probably could figure out a different phone calling app or just never turn off my phone, but this one should work since it is the factory installed app. And yes it could also have something to do with my service provider, Mint Mobile. It’s a small nuisance to deal with considering everything else works perfectly, love your phone, maybe get somebody on this since others have had this issue over the years. Thanks Fairphone. Oh and don’t make this worse. Test it out with them before sending updates. If you need my phone as a guinea pig call me, I will make sure to answer by hitting the speaker phone button before I talk.
hello and welcome to the community forum
Please note however and make sure you report that to Fairphone directly
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Have you by any chance spoken to Mint Mobile? Also we have dedicated US topics, that you might find useful
I have messaged Fairphone, but not the app which I don’t know if that is possible, and I have not messaged Mint Mobile which I didn’t believe was their fault because the voice function, using the same mic, on the texting app works flawlessly through their network.
this workaround was reported before in the US topic linked by @Meaghan
I doubt that support would be of help, as long as the FP5 is not officially supported in the US
I have a Fairphone 5 and I live in Texas. I had Mint mobile for 2 years and had several issues with them, including the mic not working and had to activate the speaker to make it work. I changed to US Mobile (Dark Star network, that I think is AT&T) and all problems that I had with my Fairphone 5 disappear.
Hope it helps.