Need help diagnosing Sprint Galaxy S4 speaker problem

[rvmeush]

My Sprint Galaxy S4 running KitKat has recently developed problems with the speaker. For the most part I'm not getting sound from the speaker. The headphone output works okay, and I can get sound from the phone speaker when speaking on a phone call. Every once in a while I can get some sound from the speaker but then it will stop working after a few seconds.

I've noticed that when I'm playing music to the speaker, if I hold it up close to my ear I can hear a faint clicking sound. I tried the Samsung diagnostic program (activated by dialing *#0*# ) but no sound comes out during the Speaker test.

I've seen lots of problems reported after the Sprint Kitkat update, and I'm trying to figure out if I'm having a software related problem or if the speaker is defective. To deal with a possible software problem I've tried rebooting the phone, taking the battery out, and a host of other reported fixes for Kitkat problems - but nothing has worked.

I'm inclined to think that I have a software problem because I can hear a faint clicking from the speaker when playing music, but I'm not certain. I'd appreciate any information about how to determine if the speaker needs to be replaced or if there is some software problem that needs to be addressed.

Thanks.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! If it's a software problem, you could try a couple of things:

1. Boot into Safe Mode to see if any 3rd party apps are causing issues.
2. Boot into Recovery Mode and wipe the system cache partition, which won't erase any personal data.

Steps for both are here: Reset: Samsung Galaxy S 4 | T-Mobile Support

 

[rvmeush]

None of the software fix attempts that I tried worked, so I ordered a replacement speaker for the phone. That seems to have fixed the problem.