Frigging cell phone is broken?

[Phil_S]

I've got the Galaxy s4. The earpiece isn't working. When I answer a call, you can hear me. I can't hear you. I need a plug-in headset, bluetooth, or use the speakerphone. I'm am mad as heck. I don't believe for a minute the ear speaker is broken. I had this problem a while back and went through all sorts of weirdness including reset to factory settings and none of that worked. By some unknown miracle, it started working again. I'm convinced its a software problem. It looks like I have to jailbreak the phone to fix it.

Anyone else encounter such nonsense?

[jestaudio]

i haven't had that specific issue but I have just ditched my s4 in favour of my old HTC after constant software issues and crashes, it seems very dependant on provider , I,m on O2 in the uk and I have heard other people having various glitches and issues.
I have never tried it but I have heard of folk having some success with rooting the phone and ditching the pre provided software

[lord preset]

Damn PCB POS. Time to gut that sucker and rewire it PTP with Sozos and CC.

[Phil_S]

Damn PCB POS. Time to gut that sucker and rewire it PTP with Sozos and CC.

[Cliff Schecht]

Sometimes the speakers inside the earpiece accumulate enough ferrous material (if you're drilling steel around it for example) to effectively push the diaphragm all the way down into the basket. My old Motorola phone did this eventually and worked perfectly after I pulled the little bits of metal/crud out of the speaker. Those diaphragms are super thin and it doesn't take a lot of material to start killing the sound.

Not sure what you're facing though. Has google provided no answers?

[Structo]

We just hook two cans together with a string, pull the line tight and we can communicate directly.

[Cantplay]

Could the headphone jack contacts be stuck open with some debris? That would cut out the speaker.

John

[Phil_S]

Cliff: I think you are on to something here. Maybe the speaker actually is hosed. For better or worse, I ordered a good pull from a like phone for $5 on eBait from someone local. I figure USPS will bring it to me by Tuesday. If that deal goes south, I haven't lost much. Much to gain, little to lose.

I ran the vacuum cleaner over the speaker grill thinking there was dust or something, but no luck there.

It quit a while back and then came back. That's why I was thinking it's not actually broken, but your explanation sheds a different light on it.

Google, unfortunately, offered very little. Everyone wants me to do a software reset. I tried that last time and it was a huge PITA afterwards putting the phone back to the way I like it. And it did nothing for the speaker.

Finally, after several attempts, I was able to "root" my phone. This is the equivalent of jail-breaking an I-phone. Once done, I was able to reset a flag to allow me to run the secret diagnostics. The earpiece diagnostic made no noise in the earpiece, suggesting I should replace it. So, that explains my order for the replacement.

Cantplay: Actually, that was at least part of the problem last time, but doesn't seem to be it this time. Last time, I learned how to manually release the spring in the headphone jack. It is not stuck. I can shine a light in there and see it is OK. Besides, after I got it working again, I stopped using the jack in favor of the bluetooth. I did, however, use the jack once the earpiece cut out again, and the jack works. This is actually good because I believe it tells the the audio IC is OK. If I had to deal with replacing the IC part, that would be beyond my comfort level.

I'll report back after I make the earpiece speaker swap.

Thanks at the very least for some moral support. This sort of thing can be very frustrating. It shouldn't happen!

[Phil_S]

Not that anyone is waiting with baited breath over this...the replacement earpiece speaker arrived today (eBay $5 parted out from another phone). It was hard for me to believe I did the job in under 30 minutes. I'm always slow and the screws are soooooo tiny. Verdict: the earpiece speaker was bad. Phone works fine now!

[eniam rognab]

dontcha just love fixin stuff? i know i do, good going Phil

[Cantplay]

Did you dope the edges of the cone?

John

[Phil_S]

It's a funny looking little bugger. I couldn't find where to dope it. I can't see how a thing like this can go bad.

[donzoid]

Good job Phil! Yeah those tiny little screws are a real challenge I had to replace the speaker in my HTC and thought I was gonna hose it but took me abt an hour and it was a little oval after getting to it, I noticed the ground strap for it was at the mounting surface and the old one wasn't making good enough contact.

I didn't dope mine either, 'cept for the guy working on it.