earphone issue

lance222

Member
Feb 2, 2020
6
0
0
First off, I am not a tech person, anything but. I had a coolpad catalyst phone. USB charging port went dead, couldn't charge it. Had a cracked screen, but ran fine otherwise for what it was. The issue I am posting about I never had with this phone over about 3 years.

I bought a LG Rebel 3 LTE phone. The issue is the earphones I used on the other phone, and sometimes in my kindle fire, don't work on this phone. I plug it in and the volume still comes through the phone as if the earphones weren't plugged in. I tried it with 2 sets of earphones, same thing. And it's not that any wire will work. I have an older mono earpiece that I used to use with a transistor radio. That works. The audio goes through the earpiece. Problem is that's a pretty crappy wire where you lose volume listening that way. That problem is the wire, not the phone, because it does the same thing through the kindle fire.

I have checked the specs on my old phone, this phone and the fire. They all say the headphone jack is 3.5 mm, whatever that means. I did notice one thing on the new phone. When I plug the wires that didn't work in, they seemed pretty secure, but a little of the silver is exposed. On the old phone and the fire, this is not the kiss. When they are plugged in there is no silver exposed. I am the metal part that actually enters the jack. Again, with the new phone, there is not much exposed, but you can see some.

What do I do? If I bought different earphones, how do I do the same thing won't happen. One of the pair I have specifically say they are compatible with any 3.5 mm device.

One other question while I am here. Volume boosting apps. I do a lot of walking outside listening to podcasts. I have yet to have a phone that has sufficent volume when you are walking on a road with cars and trucks passing by. Again, speakerboost, the app I used, worked phone with the catalyst and fire.

The Rebel 3, I can install it fine, but it doesn't really work. I'm not sure of this, but I don't think it will let the app increase the phone's volume more than the max volume the phone itself provides. I've played around with it. If I have the phone volume set at mayne 50% then I can use the app to increase volume. But if I have the phone volume at max seems to me it gets no louder no matter what I set the app at. I've tried about 3 other apps in addition to spearker boost and same thing.

Definitely not what happens with the other devices. I do it every morning with my kindle fire to lisen to podcasts while I'm in the shower. The fire volume is already set at max and when I go ino speaker boost and can make it louder, much louder.

Same thing. Any solutions to this? Thanks.
 
Problem is pretty likely to be the wiring inside the headphones. Are the wired headphones you're trying to use the kind that have an in-line microphone/control button? If so, the wiring on the new device might not be compatible with the same wiring you had for the other ones (pretty common on some brands, like Nokia or Apple). The connector is the same (ish...chances are you'll see more 'sections' on the ones that don't work versus the usual three silver sections on a regular headphone jack: netural, left channel, right channel). If this is the case, wiggling the jack in/out would most likely cause you to hear the audio in mono, then stereo, and probably even trigger actions on the phone randomly like Voice commands or volume changes/track skips.
 
Thanks for the reply. I found out the problem earlier today. Well, I did say I was not tech inclined. I was out walking again and had the wires, what the hell, try again. The first one is in all the way, no metal showing. And it works. So I try the other wire. That one has a little metal or the silver showing, like yesterday, and doesn't work. I just pushed it in harder and it went all the way in and works.

I know, SO STUPID. Don't know what to tell you. Never crossed my mind yesterday. I had pushed them in as hard as I had on the other devices and thought that was that. And this was not 5 minutes yesterday. This was an hour plus trying to figure out why they didn't work. Trying the different wires 3, 4,5 times. Amazing.

Same with the volume boost. Now it works with a solution that never crossed my mind. It will work, but the spearkerboost app has to be open and on the screen. If the phone goes idle and the screen goes dark the volume increase from speakerboost disappears.
Podcast still plays, but lower because it's only using the phone's volume. Put the screen back on again and the volume comes back.

I just stumbled upon this. Would have never thought of it based on years of using it with the previous phone. The app did not have to be open on the screen and I didn't lose any volume if the phone screen went dark. The app needed to be open to work, but it didn't have to be on screen.

Is there a way to get it like that on this phone? Truth be told it was it's a real pain the way it is now.
 
On most modern smartphones, when you press the 'increase volume' button, the volume will increase and a slider will slide to the right. Then at some point, the slider stops sliding and you get a warning about how listening to loud music can damage your hearing. Once you acknowledge this warning, you can generally keep pressing the 'increase volume' button some more, and the volume increases. Often, the slider is now showing 'red' to act as some kind of warning that you are listening at a volume that is 'too loud'. Anyway - just try repeatedly pressing the up volume button and see what happens.

Regarding the volume boost app, there's generally a way to set parameters for each and every app you have installed. Go to settings/ apps, and you should see a long list of apps on your phone. Find your volume boost app, select it, and see what options are offered. You might see an option to 'prevent sleep' or similar. There might also be a setting somewhere that lets you specifically allow a list of apps to keep running in the background.
 
That is exactly the warning that I got from my new phone. Warning me about playing the volume that high. I got it once or twice and just went past it. Haven't gotten it since. Sort of the same with the speakerboost app. It warns you when you first install it. Plus, it really warns you about going over 40(the app increase goes from 1 to 60). which I hav never done.

I looked into that possible solution. There is something that says permissions and underneath it says no permissions requested. However, it is grayed out. I mean I can't click on it the way I can the other things listed like storage, data, notifications.
 
I've been searching around trying to figure out the problem. Thought it might be something to do with something called battery optimization. I put it on ignore for speaker boost and there was no change. If the app is not on screen it doesn't work and if the screen goes dark, even if the app is onscreen when it does, it doesn't work.

Today I was looking at reviews on google play store. One from 2020 has my problem and the review makes it sound like it's a recent development. Maybe that is the problem. I just got the phone and just installed the app. I'M getting the latest version. I think I installed it on my kindle fire maybe 3 years ago and I don't think it's ever been updated. I know I haven't down it manually and I don't recall a notification telling me that it had been updated. Some apps I get an automatic update others I don't from Amazon.

Sort of the same with my old phone. The last year or so I had automatic updates shut off. I had to choose to update and I'm not sure I ever did with speakerboost. Not in a good at least a good 6 months.

Maybe that's it. Nothing to do with the phone. Something speakerboost did in updating the app.
 
Well, I installed an earlier version of speakerboost. A version of September of last year. The problem is gone.
 
So much for that. Fix doesn't work anymore. It did all day yesterday. Today I noticed it didn't anymore. And I don't have my apps set to automatically update. It shouldn't have. I looked in the cache, though and there was maybe 17MB there. I cleared that, still didn't work. I did what I did the other day. Uninstalled it and installed a version form September of last year. Same thing, still doesn't work. Why not? Way over my head.
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
955,597
Messages
6,965,352
Members
3,163,341
Latest member
davidaram