iPhone 12 Pro - Voice breaking up on calls

Yes, I have an iPhone XS and I’ve been having this mysterious problem of people telling me I’m breaking up badly when I can hear them just fine. This has been happening consistently since I returned to Ontario in March 2022 from being in British Columbia for 6 months. I never noticed it in BC, and can’t remember having this trouble before I left in September 2021.

if Apple doesn’t fix this soon (appears to be a software problem) I’ll be switching to Samsung.

So far so good… yesterday afternoon I tried something that one of the posts here suggested… during a call (that was breaking up for the person on the other end) changing the network from one option to the other. In my area the options are LTE and 3G. A note on LTE said that it improves voice quality, and indeed, the person receiving my call said that my lower voice tones were a bit fuzzy in 3G. But there was no breaking up! I then switched back to LTE and the voice quality returned to good. Then I called another friend and talked for 15 minutes with no breaking up at all. What a relief!!! And later in the evening the call to my elderly Mom was delightfully clear for her after months of struggling to figure out what I’m saying through a very spotty transmission. For months, my calls to her have always started deceptively clear with my transmission beginning to break up about a minute into the call and getting worse from there.

After reading everyone’s experiences on this forum, I was sure I’d have to switch to Samsung. So I’m SUPER RELIEVED to have found a solution on my iPhone 10 S that allows me to stay with Apple iOS devices. I’m not good with new learning curves!

So the recipe for this hack is simple:

within a call that is breaking up, go to

Settings > Cellular Data Options > Voice & Data > switch from the option that’s checked to the other one. If this causes your call to be dropped, just call back. I switched back during this call and the call wasn’t dropped.

I’ve had four perfect calls now - So far so good.

i hope everyone who has this problem tries this and that it works for them, and stays working!

So far so good… this afternoon I tried something that one of the posts here suggested… during a call (that was breaking up for the person on the other end) changing the network from one option to the other. In my area the options are LTE and 3G. A note on LTE said that it improves voice quality, and indeed, the person receiving my call said that my lower voice tones were a bit fuzzy in 3G. But there was no breaking up! I then switched back to LTE and the voice quality returned to good. Then I called another friend and talked for 15 minutes with no breaking up at all. What a relief!!! And later in the evening the call to my elderly Mom was delightfully clear for her after months of struggling to figure out what I’m saying through a very spotty transmission. For months, my calls to her have always started deceptively clear with my transmission beginning to break up about a minute into the call and getting worse from there. 

After reading everyone’s experiences on this forum, I was sure I’d have to switch to Samsung. So I’m SUPER RELIEVED to have found a solution on my iPhone 10 S that allows me to stay with Apple iOS devices. I’m not good with new learning curves!

So the recipe for this hack is simple:

within a call that is breaking up, go to 

Settings > Cellular Data Options > Voice & Data > switch from the option that’s checked to the other one. If this causes your call to be dropped, just call back. I switched back during this call and the call wasn’t dropped. 

Just got the new SE & everyone I call says that I’m breaking up. They sound fine to me. Happens on speaker & air pods. Never happened with the original SE. Same carrier AT &T as older SE which never had any issues. Super frustrating; it’s supposed to be a phone!! Guess I’ll try some of the tips here about the 5G. No way am I doing a reset on a 3 week old phone……

I got a little excited when I saw this post. Went to Apple. They tested my phone and said it’s just fine. Yeah right. Their suggestion was have Verizon change my phone to an e-sim.

My daughter who has an iPhone 13 said she had numerous problems with esim (texts from Android users were blocked as an example) and had to change back to physical card.

The other evening I happened to be in the room when my mother received a call on her landline from my brother who has an iPhone 11. She had call on speaker and it was absolutely horrible. Now I finally have heard first hand what people are complaining about to me. All I could do was hope to catch enough words to get a general clue what he was talking about.

Really Apple!!!

We are not crazy. There are thousands of us suffering from this problem. Find the source and fix it!!!!!

My daughter wondered last night if it’s the antenna in the phone as opposed to the microphone…interesting theory

Thank you for posting this!! It’s so absolutely ridiculous that Apple is ignoring this. I can’t figure out why there aren’t more complaints, maybe most people don’t use the speaker function? Or maybe they think it’s just them since Apple certainly is certainly pretending it’s not happening. Meanwhile, I’m back to using my iPhone 8, and have been for months because I use the speaker fairly exclusively and it was stressing me out, checking in if the caller could still hear me.

My iphone12 does this as well. I’ve tried turning on and off the noise cancelation which doesn’t help but for just a few minutes at most. Have you found any other solutions?

If it persists contact your Carrier (Cellular Service Provider), the agency that issued the SIM / eSIM to you.

A lot of people are having this same problem. Clearly, it’s the phone not the carriers, since we all have different carriers.

is Apple going to do something about it?

Yep, same problem. There's clearly something wrong here. Also a big problem with the 12 Pro Max is internal reflections in the lens system. These really shouldn't be problems....

Experiencing the same thing with my new iPhone 13. My sister has the iPhone 12 and she also has the same problem.

So the world's most sophisticated phone isn't useable - as a phone.....

I tried it doesn't work

Hey guys,

I had the same issue, but after firmware (not ios) update it seems fixed. I didn't do it myself but in a repair service. Probably you can also do it yourself. Hope it helps someone.