Xperia active microphone sensitivity

[skela]

Several people have complained that it is difficult to hear my voice during GSM calls (3G disabled and in a silent environment, for what it is worth). This could be related to the upgrade to Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwhich) a couple of weeks ago. Before the upgrade, I do not remember any such complaints (except when I was holding the phone ‘hands-free’ between shoulder and cheek).

Today, I played with the built-in Sound Recorder application. To access it, I installed the SoundRecorder wrapper. I checked the sound level ‘VU meter’ while speaking. I had to really shout to reach the maximum level of the meter. Without me shouting, the playback (on the back-side loudspeaker) was very quiet. I also tested this with the wired headset-microphone that was bundled with the phone, and I got the same result. I had to either shout or put the microphone inside my mouth to get loud sound.

Did the Android upgrade (firmware 4.1.B.0.431) make the microphone insensitive? As far as I understand, mobile phones usually have some sort of adaptive gain in the microphone amplifier.

One possible explanation is that I had enabled noise suppression in the call settings after upgrading to ICS. I have now disabled it again. In Sound Recorder, I did not notice any significant difference with or without it.

[Johan]

I suggest that you check and try the following before having the phone examined at an repair center.

Try using another SIM card to rule out any SIM or network related issue.

Try reinstalling the phone software using SUS.

http://www.sonymobile.com/gb/tools/update-service/

And if the volume still remains this low from the mic I suggest that you contact your local support team to have it examined.

http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/support/contact-us/contact-info/

[agas]

I have the same problems with my Xperia Active, as "skela" had:

Several people have also complained that it is difficult to hear my voice during GSM calls after upgrading it to Android 4. I sent it into a repair center, where they reinstalled it into previous version of Android. After updating it again into Android 4, the sensitivyty of the microfone ist jetzt again horrible. Did the Android upgrade really make the microphone insensitive?

I have tried to change the SIM and to reinstall the phone using SUS, but the problem continue. What could I do with it? Thanks for any pice of advice.

[Richwater]

I have the same problem with my Xperia Active. How can I downgrade back to GB 2.3.7 ?
If noise supression enabled my talk became inaudible. Without noise supression the microphone sensitivity is still wrong. If this is an upgrade problem, then Sony have to solve it with a bugfix. Investigating with the sony test application it sounds htat the front microphone is very noisy, but the back one is right.

[t3odor]

My wifes Active with GB 2.3.4 appears to have the same problem. I doubt that its related to microphone only, because also DTMF tones during call get send with the same suprisingly low quality. I also did read about people still having issues after multiple repairs, so I updated to ICS to test - no luck. This thread is quite old, have you guys solved your problems ?

[Sicis]

I have the same problem. Got latest ICS update on my phone.
I have done factory reset dozens of times, a lot of times it helped, few times it didnt.
Couple of times i just turned off and on the phone and ppl can hear me again, its definently a software issue.
I think the problem appears after i use call function with handsfree earphones. Last couple of times restarting phone helped for me. This problem appeared since ICS update.

[skela]

Some months after the update to Ice Cream Sandwich, my phone refused to start up, after some apparent corruption of the media databases. The Windows utility to reimage the firmware did not help. (Maybe I should have tried factory reset in time, or maybe there was a real hardware bug that caused the corruption in the first place.)

I had to take it one last time to warranty repair in 2013. Some hardware was replaced and the old firmware (Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread, 4.0.2.A.0.62, baseband  8x55A-AAABQOAZM-203028D-64) was restored. I did not try to upgrade to ICS since then.

The microphone issue randomly occurs with the Gingerbread firmware as well. February 2013, I bought another Active at discounted price, and also that one suffers from the issue every now and then. I can perfectly hear the other party, but they complain about my voice (or lack thereof). That newer Active was once to warranty repair due to another call quality issue, something severely broken in the echo cancellation, causing the voice to be severely distorted.

I was considering to build and install a third-party system such as Cyanogenmod, but as far as I understand, it would not fix this issue, because the problem likely exists in the firmware blob for the baseband processor. As far as I understand, the third-party systems simply reuse the firmware blobs as is.

For what it is worth, someone reported the problem with a sister model on the XDA forums 3 years ago: ST15i - low microphone volume

Other than this issue, I am happy with the Active and will likely use both as offline GPS navigators (with OpenStreetMap data) until they finally die. For my wife, I will have to buy a replacement that works more reliably as a phone.