People have trouble hearing me during calls

[ar1g3]

So lately people have been complaining they can barely hear me during calls. It's not all the time, most of the time it seems fine, but sometimes I'm barely understandable apparently. 

Tested the mic in the diagnostic settings and it works. 

When I record a video there's also sound, not of the greatest quality but there is sound.

People tell me it sounds as if I've got a fish bowl over my head.

I recently dropped the phone pretty badly, so I'm thinking something broke and this is the cause of my problem. Is it worth peeling the phone open and replacing the mic or not?

I may open the phone up in the near future to replace the battery, but only if I get rid of the 'storage full' nonsense. I love this phone, I don't want to replace it. Right now the mic is giving me problems, the battery life is poor (which is to be expected of a Li-ion battery after 4 years) and apparently my internal storage is full even though all my files and apps are on my SD card.

[Jonas]

Hi @ar1g3, sorry to hear about this.

As the microphone works fine in the test, you could try and change the network mode in your device and see if there is any change. To do that, go to Settings > More > Mobile networks > Preferred network type > GSM/2G Only.

Do note that this will make using mobile data slower, as the GSM network isn't as fast as 3G/4G, so use this only for testing purposes.

If one of your friends, colleagues or family members have a SIM card with the same size as yours, you can test their SIM card in your device, or order a new one from your operator.

Regarding the storage that is full, if you go to Settings > Storage, check how much cached data you have, as this usually tends to stack up quite a bit unless you have recently deleted this data.

Keep me posted!

[ar1g3]

I just reset the phone to factory settings. I already removed the cache from all the apps I had, which weren't too many. This didn't free up any real space. I backed up my contacts, messages and stuff like that in Xperia Companion and reset the phone. This freed up 6GB on my internal drive. 

Next time I have the opportunity to call someone I'm going to see if it's better now, maybe the reset also fixed my call problem.

It must be a software thing because it works in audio recorder and Shazam also works fine. If the mic was really broken on a hardware level Shazam wouldn't be able to pick up what song I'm listening to I think.

[Jonas]

Hello again @ar1g3, thank you so much for the update and I'm glad to hear that you have some more freed up space again on the device.

The device two microphones and when you are recording audio using an application or in a video, the second microphone is used. I'm not sure about the Shazam application and if that is using the second microphone or not though, as we have not developed that application ourselves.

Keep me posted on how it went when you make a phone call!

[SelTheDon]

There's an option to mute background noise in the settings somewhere. I can't remeber exactly where it is but turning it off raisses the mic volume.

[Jonas]

Hi @SelTheDon, thank you for helping out!

There is a setting called microphone noise suppression, is that the one that you are thinking about? It can be found in Settings > Calls.

This was removed as microphone noise suppression is always active in Android 6.0, but it was made available again for the Xperia Z2 and Xperia Z3-series, so it can be turned off in these devices.

[SelTheDon]

Yeah that's the one. My voice sounded muffly and really low until I turned it off.

It's been a while since I've had a Z2 so I wasn't exactly sure where the option was  

[Jonas]

@SelTheDon, yeah, I had to think for a bit as well since it's on by default now for all devices released after the Xperia Z3-series, but after a while it hit me!

Thanks again and have a nice day!

[SelTheDon]

Glad to be of help mate 👍