iPhone 13 Pro Bluetooth Mic Quality Terrible

I made a hardware test at the store. There was an issue with my mic. They’ve replaced it in 3 hours, now seems to be fine.

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So I went to an apple store today and we tried the same test with another iPhone 12 and an iPhone 8 SE. -> Same results. Poor quality(muffled) of voice memo on iPhone. Much better quality on android.

Then we did the test with a pair of airpods pro and let another apple worker hear the recordings but blindly! So he didn't know which recording was made on which phone (android or apple). Without hesitation he said the android sounds better.

Then we assumed that it looks like there's a filtering/processing going on on the recording of the iPhone like when you noise cancel the background noise. On iPhone 12 you have the abilty to turn of noise cancellation but not with the iPhone 13. So we turned it off on the 12 and the sound quality of the recorded voice memo was slightly better, but not as clear as on Android.

So I didn't get any help from apple. Nobody seems to be aware of this major bug, or maybe it's a feature to sell more airpods?!

On Android phones you can set the samplingrate you want to record ...at least in the voice memo app.

On iOS unfortunately you cannot choose.

The transmission between Bluetooth device and iPhone is the problem not the phone itself.

When I record 10sec voice memo with Bluetooth microphone on Android the file size is approx 360 kByte. (Which makes sense since I've set it to 256kbits/s)

When I record 10sec voice memo with Bluetooth microphone on iOS the file size is approx 160 kByte.(-->128kbits/s)

Both files have the same format: mpeg-4-audio

It looks like there is some processing being applied to the recording .. maybe a low-pass filter, since the highs ( and mids) are muffled

When you record a 10sec voice memo with the microphone of the iPhone (no Bluetooth device connected), the file size is approx

400 kByte (-->320kbit/s)

The quality is perfect

Thank God I finally found someone who has noticed the same issue.

I tried 5 different devices. All of them give me same poor voice recordings.

Devices I tried:

Sony wf-1000xm4

Soundcore liberty air 2 pro

Jabra elite 7 pro

Jabra elite 75t

Anker soundcore boost

With all devices the voice recording are extremely poor and low in volume.

I tried a colleagues' iPhone 13 pro and another ones iPhone 12. Same result.

Then I tried the same test on a Samsung Galaxy s10 5G and the voice recording came out crystal clear.

I guess nobody mentioned it before, because most people would think it's normal this way. But only if you compare the 2 recordings side by side you notice There's a huge problem with the iPhone Bluetooth mic recordings.

Seems like the Bitrate ist very low when you record voice messages over Bluetooth devices.

I'm on iOS 15.3 but noticed it right from the start of purchasing the phone.

Any ideas?

Which one of you actually took your iPhone to an Apple Store, sent it in, or took it to an AASP?

And yes, I've used other phones/devices with Bluetooth IEMs and headphones and the microphone quality was no different between the other devices and iPhones. But I did have an iPhone once that had serious BT issues including sound quality and it was replaced: Problem solved.

You can use regular headphones with the Lightning to 3.5mm Headphone Jack adapter.

Lightning to 3.5 mm Headphone Jack Adapter - Apple

ok understood.

I'm baffled that only a small amount of people noticed this major issue since apple forced users to use bluetooth devices by removing the headphone jack.

My next idea would be to find an iPhone with an older iOS and try the voice recording on it and see how the quality turns out

I did this blind test with 4 colleagues' Android and apple users and all told me same opinion. You can clearly hear the difference. I wish I could upload some audio files to prove it

I don't get how come nobody talked about this?? This is a serious bug and should be addressed.

First I though maybe I'm doing something wrong since I've been long time Android User.

But no. I even tried another iPhone 8 meanwhile.. but same result. I'm quite happy with the 13 pro max but this is unacceptable for a pricetag >€1300

That was also my initial idea. Majority of apple users never experienced anything different so how would they know.

You gotta be kidding on the last part with the airpods..I gotta try it out tomorrow with my colleague

I planning to go to an Apple store this week. But I'm afraid they're gonna tell me to just do a factory reset or some B's like that.

We need constructive solutions.

As I said Ive tested iPhone 8, 12, 13 pro and 13 pro max. You cannot tell me it's a faulty unit. Maybe bug in iOS??