People keep saying they can't hear me!

[MamaBear2014]

OK, this is my first Smart Phone. I had a simple Samsung cell phone before, and this S5 is bigger, but I love this thing.

But people on the phone keep telling me they can barely hear me. It's driving me crazy. :-\ I mean, I listen at the top of the phone and talk at the bottom, while holding it to my ear, right?! But I practically have to scream to get them to hear me. This is in the car with the AC running on medium fan speed, but the windows closed, BUT it happens plenty of other times too. Is the mic in this think kinda marginal?

 

[ashleymcguffries90]

I don't know if this will correct the issue since this is my first Android phone. Go to your settings, scroll to the bottom where it says "call" scroll to the bottom and see if the box is checked next to noise reduction. If not check it. If that doesn't work, then you are probably in a bad area or something is wrong with your mic and you need to return to your carrier

 

[MamaBear2014]

I don't know if this will correct the issue since this is my first Android phone. Go to your settings, scroll to the bottom where it says "call" scroll to the bottom and see if the box is checked next to noise reduction. If not check it. If that doesn't work, then you are probably in a bad area or something is wrong with your mic and you need to return to your carrier

Thanks Ashley, didn't know about that - will go try it.

 

[ashleymcguffries90]

Ok. Please post the results. I'm currently with AT&T and for a while people were saying that they couldn't hear me nor understand me, turns out it's a tower near me that needs some work. Presently, it's being worked on- that's maybe another thing you can check: see if any towers in your area are down, if not, report your issue and I'm sure your carrier will send someone out to check things out

 

[MamaBear2014]

Ok. Please post the results. I'm currently with AT&T and for a while people were saying that they couldn't hear me nor understand me, turns out it's a tower near me that needs some work. Presently, it's being worked on- that's maybe another thing you can check: see if any towers in your area are down, if not, report your issue and I'm sure your carrier will send someone out to check things out

I will, but it won't be towers, it's all over Denver. Thanks!

 

[ashleymcguffries90]

You are welcome! I hope I somewhat helped you with your issue.

 

[MamaBear2014]

I checked it last night and apparently I'd found the noise cancellation setting when I first got the phone, so now it's a mystery.

It seems positional. DO I need to talk closer to the phone, because of the noise cancellation setting, perhaps?

 

[brothamoveson]

I'm with AT&T and I was having that issue all of a sudden one day. Called and got a replacement no issues anymore.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[AZgl1500]

I have found that it don't much matter how I hold the phone.

The microphone is very good.

The noise cancellation is pretty good and reducing background noises, but can't prevent the car a/c vents from covering up your audio if they blow right on the phone.

I just searched thru the Settings menus with the "search function" and can't find anything that mentions microphone sensitivity. So, it must be fixed in the Auto Leveling software.

I know that when I use the phone as a voice recorder, it will pickup anyone talking in a medium sized conference room. just did that for a birthday party with 30 attendees and the introductions around the room all were easily heard in the recording.

 

[MamaBear2014]

I have found that it don't much matter how I hold the phone.

The microphone is very good.

The noise cancellation is pretty good and reducing background noises, but can't prevent the car a/c vents from covering up your audio if they blow right on the phone.

I just searched thru the Settings menus with the "search function" and can't find anything that mentions microphone sensitivity. So, it must be fixed in the Auto Leveling software.

I know that when I use the phone as a voice recorder, it will pickup anyone talking in a medium sized conference room. just did that for a birthday party with 30 attendees and the introductions around the room all were easily heard in the recording.

Now that you mention it, I may need to adjust the car vent down, to be sure it doesn't blow on it. Stay tuned....

 

[AZgl1500]

When in the car, I wear a Blue Parrott xl250 truckers headset with its' own noise cancelling microphone.

Obviously that makes it hands free and not a LEO magnet. Around here, if you have your hand up to your ear, you are likely to get a Blue Light warning real quick.

Even so, with the trucker's headset on, the car's a/c vents must be directed away from my face. The air noise is louder than your voice and people really gripe in a hurry about the loss of microphone volume.

 

[ccps]

The issue you have is a known bug that I have seen posted all over the place and that I encountered when I got my phone. You may go through several replacements before you get one that works. I got my air compressor out. got it up to about 30 psi and blew out the microphone. Not an issue since then. Not sure if canned air will have enough psi to fix it. also i would not go to high on the psi of a air compressor. you could blow the microphone materials apart. The microphone is the tiny hole next to the charge port.

 

[Jason Parker2]

Make sure you aren't holding the phone with your pinky finger over the small microphone hole near the usb port.

 

[MamaBear2014]

The issue you have is a known bug that I have seen posted all over the place and that I encountered when I got my phone. You may go through several replacements before you get one that works. I got my air compressor out. got it up to about 30 psi and blew out the microphone. Not an issue since then. Not sure if canned air will have enough psi to fix it. also i would not go to high on the psi of a air compressor. you could blow the microphone materials apart. The microphone is the tiny hole next to the charge port.

Thanks CCPS. If this is a known bug with Samsung, then they should fix it, or get me a fixed phone!

 

[flygirlz]

OK, this is my first Smart Phone. I had a simple Samsung cell phone before, and this S5 is bigger, but I love this thing.

But people on the phone keep telling me they can barely hear me. It's driving me crazy. :-\ I mean, I listen at the top of the phone and talk at the bottom, while holding it to my ear, right?! But I practically have to scream to get them to hear me. This is in the car with the AC running on medium fan speed, but the windows closed, BUT it happens plenty of other times too. Is the mic in this think kinda marginal?

I just had this happening on my brand new Note4 . I read somewhere else that someone had the same problem and it was the Google now voice settings. The only time people could hear me was if I had them on speaker. Once I turn speaker off they couldn't hear me. So I went into the Google settings, Google now, voice and unchecked and turned it off to see if it worked. It did. I didn't want to deal with why ( and also had some dead pixels) it wasn't working so I just returned the phone and got another. don't know if this will help you but you can check!

 

[AZgl1500]

there is one other feature you need to turn OFF

Settings/ Applications/ Call/ Noise Reduction


This little feature has caused me more grief than just about anything else.
I now turn it off immediately when getting a new phone.

 

[MamaBear2014]

I just had this happening on my brand new Note4 . I read somewhere else that someone had the same problem and it was the Google now voice settings. The only time people could hear me was if I had them on speaker. Once I turn speaker off they couldn't hear me. So I went into the Google settings, Google now, voice and unchecked and turned it off to see if it worked. It did. I didn't want to deal with why ( and also had some dead pixels) it wasn't working so I just returned the phone and got another. don't know if this will help you but you can check!

No, it's not relevant and you're just hijacking my thread.

 

[MamaBear2014]

I finally got fed up with the phone situation and took it back to the Verizon store and insisted on a new phone. We tried everything and people kept telling me that I sounded muffled and they couldn't hear me. So Verizon was very good about it and over-nighted me a new phone. I took it to the store today and the woman had told me she could back everything up for me before switching to the new phone, and restore it afterwards, but it didn't work. All my apps are now gone, my settings, everything. I don't know what to do. She said something about backing up to the Verizon Cloud, and restoring using my gmail account, and she even had me log into my gmail account from the store, and did some stuff, but all my apps and settings are still gone! What do I do now???

 

[PainFX]

there is one other feature you need to turn OFF

Settings/ Applications/ Call/ Noise Reduction


This little feature has caused me more grief than just about anything else.
I now turn it off immediately when getting a new phone.

In the Personalize call sound, which do you select? Adapt sound, Soft, Clear, OFF?

 

[AZgl1500]

I finally got fed up with the phone situation and took it back to the Verizon store and insisted on a new phone. We tried everything and people kept telling me that I sounded muffled and they couldn't hear me. So Verizon was very good about it and over-nighted me a new phone. I took it to the store today and the woman had told me she could back everything up for me before switching to the new phone, and restore it afterwards, but it didn't work. All my apps are now gone, my settings, everything. I don't know what to do. She said something about backing up to the Verizon Cloud, and restoring using my gmail account, and she even had me log into my gmail account from the store, and did some stuff, but all my apps and settings are still gone! What do I do now???

ouch! I feel your pain. Unfortunately, the desk assistant that took care of you was not savvy enough to install a decent backup tool and use it to protect. Read on to help your self in the future.

All your Desk Assistant needed to do was install Samsung SmartSwitch. That app would connect both phones together and move everything over to the other phone.

but that is history, now to help you now.....

Please install Super Backup => * Super Backup : SMS & Contacts - Android Apps on Google Play

If you have an SD card, that app can make backups of all your apps, contacts, SMS messages, Call Logs, Calendars, Bookmarks to the SD card.
Don't stop there though.... as you backup each of those, send a copy elsewhere to be saved. Select the "Send to Cloud" option... you will then see a list of all the backups you have created "in that category", click on one of those backups and new windows opens showing a list of places to send that copy to. For me, I have these options as additional backups:

Evernote, Hightail, Email, Drive, Send by LAN, WiFi direct,​

I always use the email option which actually shows 3 different email accounts to send it to.
Those email backups I save on the email server in a special folder named SuperBackups
I also download those email backups to my local PC, and that PC has a backup hard drive that is automatically sync'd to the main hard drive. Talk about backups, I have 5 copies of everything.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay, that takes care of the future.
now, let's get your apps back on the phone.

Open Play Store, login if necessary

Touch the left side of the screen and slide to the right...

Open Settings: click on Download only via WiFi.....

Now, open that list again and select "My Apps"


The category of INSTALLED will show you what is currently installed on your phone, I am sure this is not all that you had on your other phone.

Slide the list to Left to ALL.

This will now show you everything that you have ever downloaded from the PlayStore.
IF it is on the phone, it will say "Installed" or "Update"

IF it is NOT on the phone, it will simply list the app and say "Free" or show the cost. Click on this app and it will reinstall it for you.

You are going to be very busy before you finish..... do make sure you have a WiFi signal before you do the downloads. In fact,

Once you get the phone fixed again, backup it up please.
Install Kies 3.0 and use that to back the phone up to your PC.... this will allow you to backup the entire phone in one fell swoop... everything will be backed up. except app data, that one falls thru the cracks.

please report back and let us know if we have helped you.
John