SGS3 speaker static, despite replacement

[jimricoli]

I have a (now ageing) S3 I9300. A fault has developed with audio playback through the speaker only, not the headphone socket.

As soon as any sound is made (whether it be a notification, ringtone, audio track, app background music, absolutely any sound) a crackly static occurs at the same time. The intended sound still plays (albeit distorted), but the static/cackle continues to play for approx 2-3 secs after the sound stops.

I thought this may be down to water/some kind of damage to the speaker itself, and so I have replaced the speaker unit with a cheap replacement from ebay - no change, exactly same issue remains. Static from main speaker, crystal playback through headphones.

I have carried out a hard reset (not factory reset) to see if there was any chance that could be a cause, but no change. Can anyone advise if there are any components I can replace, clean etc with ease, or if there is still any chance it is a software/firmware issue?

I am reluctant to replace the phone as it has served me very well for 3 odd years, but the lack of a speaker is getting to me!

Any advice very welcome!! Thanks in advance...

James

 

[Rukbat]

The headphone jack could be bad, the replacement speaker could be bad, the cable to the speaker could be bad, a connector could be bad. You can keep replacing parts until you fix it or give up, or you can bring it to a shop and have them fix it the right way the first time.

If there's no static in the earphones, it's 99.99% a hardware problem. (BTW, water damage to a speaker causes a dead speaker or distortion, not static. Water in the speaker could sound strange, but I wouldn't call it static, it's more of an underwater sound.)

 

[jimricoli]

Thanks Rukbat.

I might just take it to a shop. If I can rule out any damage to the speaker unit (housing the speaker and headphone jack), it will likely be an issue on the motherboard then, right?

 

[Tim Meir]

Has there been found a solution, or at least a source, for the speaker static problem yet?
I'm having the same issues here and am out of options at the moment. You can't even look at it without it producing static...
First I was told to flash a new modem/RIL, didn't do the trick... Second was flashing stockware back onto the phone, static remained the same (which I found very odd) and actually even got a little worse... tried different Roms / Kernels / Modems / Patches, you name it, I probably flashed it ;-).
Last thing I tried was an idea I got from an XDA thread which involved installing a new FM radio app called spirit FM, basically the only decent fm radio with that amount of fine-tuning available at playstore. Fun thing is it helped reduce the static at some points and different settings also gave a different outcome but not quite as it should be.
Throw me a bone here please because I'm about to incinerate the damn device.

Thanx in advance.

Kind regards, Tim.