There are reports of poor hear at the receivers end using WhatsApp in my case, but it has been a bit intermittent…
You say Room microphone and you mean Hands Free option I think. If it is better described as a Hands\free issue rather than a Room mic so maybe you could edit the title.
EDIT! I’ve written a fair bit about low volume and echo
I’d add a link here to a similar topic and you may find a moderator will move this post to there.
But yes it is an issue for some but as many owners don’t use the forum it’s difficult to know how common it is, so if it is a bug then it may only happen with certain set ups, Network, Network or WIFI calling,
Not me, and I started the topic as a) it isn’t consistent so I can’t replicate it and b) I have not done a reset. Given my daughters experience I will contact her again and ask her to provide details that may prompt me, but that is likely to be a week from now.
Will update on any action I take. Thanks for your interest and support.
I’m also exeriencing very low volume on Whatzapp/Telegram calls:
Call is kind of ok - a bit low and often a metallic sound
Call with speakers is very low
Videocall are also very low.
Call with normal phone functionality is better but often people complain the voice is metallic, distance or not understandable.
With speakers is also often low.
I just want to chime in the thread. I also don’t have enough consistent data to contact the support but I will keep an eye and try to define better when this is happening.
By reproducible I would interpret that as finding a way to stop it and then set the problem up i.e. it would be a software issue.
If it happens ‘always’ that is different but if neither of us have done a reset then the question will always be “what have we done to make this happen” and why haven’t we done a reset, implying the issue is not that serious and we can live with it
Resetting my phone is a thing I cannot just do every day or so, loosing all app data and apps etc.
That’s nothing about seriousness. It’s just about a software quality Fairphone has to provide. That’s what you paid for and bought. And apparently it does not work.
As I’m friendly and enough “technical” I do help to debug, but many of such issues scare people away. Then they’ll stick with Samsung or so, where everything works, at least.
Also note that the microphone test in the service menu works properly, actually. Go to Settings -> system -> developer options -> Service menu -and select the microphone test there.
Both microphones (MIC1 and MIC2) are recorded properly and I can hear things being output to me.
However MIC2 is really also silent when I’m 1m or so away from the phone. Only if I speak directly to the top of MIC2, I can hear it. It seems that MIC1 is even more sensitive than MIC1.
MIC1 is recording is even louder than MIC2 recordings when I’m speaking directly into the MIC2.
This is also what Fairphone describes in their self-help:
I also tested both mics.
When holding the phone like during a call the recording from Mic1 sounds good while the one from Mic2 sounds bad and is like the quality I get during a real call.
As mentioned here and here: Fairphone found a bug in the audio system, which causes multiple audio issues and will be fixed by the next update.
I guess this will be the real solution instead of reinstalling apps or even doing a factory reset.
Unfortunately I just tried it again and it does not seem to be better, actually. Maybe I misinterpreted that.
It really depends how near I’m the microphone.
Additionally, I’d like to add that even in normal “not hands-free mode”, i.e. is it called earpiece mode(?), the echo cancellation does not seem to work well. Other people can often hear themselve.
This also happens in Threema (I tried both echo cancellation set to “software” and “hardware” in the settings, nothing improves that) and Jitsi Meet, yet again.
Whereas I hope @ontheair is on it with a fix in the next update the issue has resolved itself on my phone, coincidentally with clearing some apps.
However i only installed What’s app to see the problem my daughter was having and here’s the news.
She wrote a strongly worded reply after her official support query suggested she looks at the forum, which she considered totally out of order, so they are sending her a replacement.
I am asking her to forward me all the comms to point out to the disappointed and disgruntled users that may have considered FP deceptive and dishonest that FP does take responsibility, though it may require a non compromising exchange of consumer expectation early on about the product not being fit for purpose.
Yes, that’s what I mean. When doing regular phone calls I never use the “speaker mode”, but always doing it the “regular” way with earpiece or bluetooth headset. People also tell me that they can hear themselves echoing, and additionally - from time to time - there is stuttering audio, artefacts, etc. on both sides (regular VoLTE-calls, no VoWifi).
In Jitsi Meet I prefer to use the “speaker mode” / “handsfree mode” and this is not working at all. Audio output just happens very silently on the earpiece, not on the speaker at all.
(Can not say anything about Threema; I use Threema a lot every day, but just for texting and not for doing audio / video calls.)
At least in my case WhatsApp seems not to be the root cause, as I never had installed WhatsApp on this phone.
