iPhone 5 bad call voice quality

Sherilpod,

I can understand your frustration - I waited until the last day to return my iPhone 5 and switched back to my iPhone 4. Even on the last day I still considered keeping iPhone 5. It's a lovely smartphone, except for the phone part. 🙂 Hope is our best quality. My suggestion is to get yourself a cheap temporary dumb phone for placing phone calls, or use Skype (assuming you've got an unlimited data plan), while we wait for Apple to fix it. If Apple doesn't fix it, there's always Gazelle.

Same problem for me but on outgoing calls all sounds very tinny and strange. My incoming calls are perfectly fine! Have booked appointment with apple tomorrow hoping they replace the phone and see if this solves it..

All the symptoms and aggrivation you express are completely inline with how I am feeling.

1. I never wanted this stupid phone - my IT department advised it
2. I had to pay for it myself!
3. No one told me that it will be useless for receiving and making calls.
4. My SIM card had to be changed for the micro one so I cannot go back to a 'normal' phone that actually works without a lot of hassle with my provider (Proximus)
5. Not sure what to do but I do know that the shop have sold me a product that is not fit for purpose i.e. to make and receive calls and therefore I have full rights for a 100% cash refund under European retail trade law.
6. I do not want to go through all the hassle of switching phones like the other readers - I simply do not have that kind of time to waste.
7. I think I will just demand a full refund and buy a Samsung or even a Nokia - remember those? Phones with a week between charging...

I found this yesterday:

https://twitter.com/icallquality

Guy who's been following this closely claims there is a possible bug fix for this on January 9th. If not, I'll have to take my 4th iphone 5 back in the get yet another replacement. Kinda sad.

I have been having all these issues as well. Apple has already swapped out phone, AT&T has swapped out SIM card and the issues are still there.

I am getting the following issues:

Garbled noise, static, key press like noises, echoing, delayed voice relay, and dropped calls.

I just spoke with AT&T and they have re-opened the case and will be looking into the network side of things. I will provide an update on this when I hear from them. According to the tech at AT&T, he said that anyone experiencing these should escalate these in order for Apple to check this out.

To add, I previously came from an iPhone 4S which had the moderate issues with cell phone in general but nothing like this. I provided the tech agent examples of numbers, dates, and times to see if they can pull any information from those instances. If anyone has similar issues like this and have opened a case with AT&T, we should start posting these case #'s for reference and make them fix this issue since we are paying for it.

If anyone has any questions, you can post on here or email me at gabex247@gmail.com.

Just wondering, did you have any luck on this issue? I just made a post about similar issues and for some reason, Apple and AT&T seem to think this issue is somewhat isolated to just me when it clearly is not.

You're definitely not the only one. My guess is there are hundreds complaining and thousands affected (you always have to consider those affected that just don't understand they're getting poor call quality or don't care that they can barely hear the call, they only care they have the iPhone). Honestly, I would venture to say that many people are just not bright enough to understand they have a crappy call quality. Or they think that it is normal. Well, it's not.

http://www.iphone5callquality.com has a great video on that page that demonstrates one of the main problems of the iphone 5's call quality (gating and digitized quality). I definitely have this problem as well and sometimes its compounded by other issues like robotic voice comperssion, very mid-rangy fidelity (no highs, no lows, all mids), and sometimes dropped calls (which I had at 6.01 but practically none at 6.02)

Rumor has it a fix is coming out tomorrow (January 9th). We'll see...

I heard about the new update and hope that it is in fact, an "update" that addresses this issue. Seemed like my phone started having these issues when I updated back from 6.0.1 and just progressed. Well, hopefully tomorrows update will be worth the wait. Luckily, I still have an iPhone 4S running on iOS 5 to revert to if needed.

I have the same issue and often cannot do a normal call at all due to the robot or metallic kind of sound. Often the call also drops. And this while the signal show at least two or three bars or reception signal. I had the phone replaced at the Apple Store but the problem is still exactly the same. If I move myself during the conversation it is even worse. At the same places with an iPhone 4 or an iPhone 3G or any other Nokia cellular phone the connections are fine w/o. any noises or disturbances and never drop.

My provide is T-Mobile (Germany) but in local threads it is reported, that same issue is happening in other provider's network. T-Mobile confirmed officially that they are aware about this specifc problem with the iPhone 5 and are heavily investigation but do not know yet, where exactly the problem results from, and where and when it will be solved and if it can be resolved for the iPhone 5 at all. This is not very encouraging.

Together with the Wifi issue on the iPhone 5 since 6.0.2 (see other discussion here) I must really say that the iPhone 5 is the worst mobile phone I have ever used (from the mobile phone and call quality perspective), it is not business grade at all. From the quality point of view it is worse than any cheap made cellular phone but price is still premium. If it is not solved soon I will not touch any mobile phone from Apple anymore.

I was told by my service provider to wait for 7 days so they can do an investigation on the line. The guy who made the report even stated that he would be calling me personally to give me the update. I told him that when he calls, it better be good news otherwise they will need an operations manager around to take the call that is going to light up their call center on that day if the issue is not fixed LOL!!.

Jokes aside, we shouldn't be lied to and these large companies need to be held accountable for the products and services they sell.

It sounds like progress is being made. They have to have taken some notice by now and are looking for a solution. It may not be an easy fix, or done in the next day or two, but I'm confident the problem will be addressed soon. I say this after having my worst experience with a snotty Genius tech who refused to believe there was a problem, but reluctantly replaced my iPhone 5... A replacement with the same call clipping/fading problem. I am still hopeful.

Hi everyone. I finally broke down and bought a new phone. Called Verizon to switch over and they informed me that Apple has acknowledged the call quality/clipped sound issue with headsets on the iPhone 5 and will be issuing a fix with the next software update (release date unknown). Hooray!

Found out that turning on the Hearing Aid Mode helped quite a bit for the iphone 4, 4s, and 5. Remarkable difference for me actually. It must take a different rought through the phone software, which helped.

Anyone, any luck with ANYTHING? I tried the Hearing Aid Mode and in my case, it seems to have gotten worse

:-(. I have been calling AT&T with new examples with numbers, dates, times, and call durations to ensure that there is nothing they can say that I didn't do.

I will keep posting updates and see where this goes. If anyone has anything to add, please let me know as I will do the same.

My understanding and experience is that the hearing aid option only affects speaker phone or handheld behavior, not headset.