LG G8 ThinQ Ringer and Speaker on Calls Not Working

[Android Central Question]

I've had my G8 close to 2 years now and for about a year I've noticed some weird issues happening with the audio that I haven't been able to find an answer for.

My phone won't audibly ring when I receive calls, when I'm on a call and I try to switch to the speaker it goes silent, notification sounds don't come through, just the vibration, and videos on websites have a really low max volume that can really only be heard if the room is completely silent that I'm in. But when I watch videos in the YouTube app or listen to music or podcasts the volume levels are where I'd expect them to be. Alarm music work just fine. And the strangest part to me is if I go to the ringtone selection screen, I click on the ringtone name and no sound plays, but if I wait a second and click on it again, it does play. The same thing happens with notification sounds in their menu. I've never changed my ringtone or notification sounds, so they're still the default, just fyi.

I tried a factory reset with no luck. I did crack my screen last year in August and had it replaced in September and I believe the G8 uses its screen for some speaker functionality, but I don't know if the replacement Sprint/T-Mobile put on it would have been the cause since I didn't notice these issues until sometime after they replaced the screen.
Does anyone have any clue why this would be happening and how to fix it?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Does this also happen in Safe Mode? https://www.t-mobile.com/support/devices/android/lg-g8-thinq/safe-mode-lg-g8-thinq

Please register on this forum, which will allow you to engage in discussion more easily, as well as post images. https://forums.androidcentral.com/ask-question/409154-join-android-central-community.html

 

[aa2814]

Thanks for the reply and link. I've now also registered. I rebooted into safe mode and speaker phone, and the ringer seems to still not work there either. I wasn't able to test all of my notifications because it limited apps I can use in that mode, but I did find out that the default SMS app "Messages" on my phone does have audible notifications whereas "Pulse", the app I typically use, does not. But when I restarted my phone in normal mode that seemed to be the case too, so no noticeable changes in Safe Mode, but now I've at least learned that some apps still do have notification sounds.

 

[B. Diddy]

Perhaps one of the stereo speakers is faulty, and the sounds that you're not hearing are designed to only come out of the faulty speaker? Try playing something with stereo sound and listen carefully to both speakers. Is the sound severely reduced or missing from one of the speakers?

 

[aa2814]

I was originally thinking maybe that's the case, but the earpiece speaker works just fine and the speaker on the bottom of the phone works just fine. I just tried listening to both again and can hear that audio is indeed coming from them. The only speaker I'm still questioning is the phone screen that acts as a speaker on some LG phone models including this one which makes me wonder if the screen replacement that happened may be the culprit. I haven't been able to figure out a way to isolate just the screen as a speaker though to test that theory and see if the screen still works as a speaker. The only official looking description I saw regarding speaker phone said that it uses the bottom speaker, so if that's true, I would expect that it'd be working from a hardware stand point. Do you know of any apps/sites that help isolate speakers for testing that could possibly help? Or do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[B. Diddy]

Hmm, so when you just tested audio, you were listening to something in stereo, like a music track or a video?

 

[aa2814]

Oh, interesting... Yes, I was listed to music, but I just tried again and I think I had the source of the sound wrong. I just tried it again and turned the volume down a lot which helped me more easily identify that the sound is actually coming from the top half of screen, not the bottom speaker like I thought. Are you thinking the bottom speaker is likely messed up then? I tried a few other sources of sound and they all seem to be coming from the screen speaker rather than the bottom speaker.