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FP3: muted / dulled microphone during calls

  • /e/ version: /e/OS 0.23-20220406175185 (Android 10) [but I have the issue since bought the phone and installed /e/OS 0.13]
  • Device model(s): Fairphone 3+
  • Device rooted: no
  • Network carrier: Congstar

Summary

When making a call with the standard phone app in /e/OS with my Fairphone 3+, the other person sometimes hears my voice only muted / dulled (like I would be very far away from my phone).

The problem

  • When making a phone call, at some random time (but usually within the first 5 minutes of the call) the other person tells me that I sound like I would be very far away. The issue disappears after a few seconds / minutes (but still already interrupted the flow of the phone call) and reappears several times during a call (depending on the length of the call). It renderes making a phone call a hassle, especially business related calls.
  • I, on the other hand, can understand the other person perfectly throughout the full call.
  • The microphone seems to work fine during Telegram calls and Signal calls, but not with the official phone app using classical phone calls.
  • It is indepedent who initiates the call.
  • It happens for all network carriers that the people have that I call (including landline).
  • It happens when using 3G, 4G, or Wi-Fi for making the call.

What I tried but did not work

Technical Details

This was a known problem for the Fairphone 3(+), see this thread in the Fairphone forum. The Fairphone updates 3.A.0084.20210204 and 3.A.0101.20210420 addressed the issue and it seems to have fixed the problem for most users as the (lengthy) forum thread got no new responses after Fairphone released the fix.

/e/OS has imported the update 3.A.0101.20210420 in version v0.17q. Still, the issue persists for me as an /e/OS user and for a user with LineageOS 18.1. Even though the patches claimed to be imported in /e/OS, it seems they are not working. Another user mentioned the same problems as comment in issue #3407 (closed) (that issue itself is about hearing problems for the Fairphone user, this issue is the other way around).

I was redirected from Fairphone support to raise this issue here since it seems to be specific to /e/OS. Since the eFoundation has sold the Fairphone 3(+) with /e/OS preinstalled, I hope to get a fix here for this software issue (the hardware works perfectly).