iPhone 5 bad call voice quality

>>I did not realize the T-Mobile is a subsidiary of DT. That really is horrible. So not fixed

I would have thought the logo and "T-" in the name might have given it away. :-)

Just to report, for me here on my phone in the UK, 6.1 has fixed most of the audio issues (I had issues previosuly with 3/Vodafone/EE SIMs - my phone is unlocked). All these now seem resolved and HD calls iPhone to iPhone now actually sound HD, though still not as good as on a cheapo Galaxy Ace or Nokia E5. Headphone volume is also much improved and I can acutally hear the other party on the headphones now. Friends on EE still report issues going from 2G to 3G coverage (having to flip airplane mode), but my network (3) is 3G only so could never see this myself.

Well I updated to 6.1 and have been making calls and they have definately improved. The choppy voice issue is gone and I have not had to ask people on the other end to repeat themselves. Im on Verizon LTE in the US. Very happy now that all functions on the phone work as they should.

Glad to hear your problems are gone.

Mine appear to be back with a vengeance. I'm on Verizon and 6.1 and same problems with robotic compressed voice, cut outs are back too. So aggrevating. Going to go to Apple store and try new replacements until its fixed.

I also updated my iPhone to 6.1. It did not change anything about the call quality.

Still chopy and robitic voice.

Do not know what to do now.

Going back to Mobistar, change the phone, 2 weeks no phone and hope a second change will fix the problem...

I loved Apple for his great products, but the love for me is over.

I have also updated to 6.1.

I have earlier described three symptoms: 1) low sound being cancelled (overly active noice cancellation?), 2) muffled sound and 3) choppy/static sound.

For the time being I have not experienced 1) after upgrading. But since the symptom varied a lot from place to lace I can not conclude anything definite.

What I do experience (with a vengeance) is 3); the sound is so clipped and static that it is almost impossible to have a conversation. This is experienced by both me and the person I talk to. The problem is so prevalent that people refuse to call me on my iPhone (uses work phone or skype instead).

I had more problems with symptom 1) and 2), now it is more symptom 3).

I can add that I did several test calls with an old Nokia from 2003 and swapped the sim-card back and forth between this phone and the iP5. The sound on the Nokia was not clipped and was much less muffled than iP5.

I posted more than a month ago that I changed from provider and that I had no more problems.

Just to let everybody know that this is still the case, no more problems :-)

In the beginning I had dropped calls, robotic voice quality and after changing from provider no more problems.

I had a support call with BASE (KPN GROUP) and 2 weeks ago the officially sent me an email saying that the do not support HD Voice quality

So go out and search a provider that is supporting the HD voice and all your problems will be gone...

For the dutch speaking guys, here is the email I received

From: BASEbusiness support [mailto:BASEbusiness.support@kpngroup.be]
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 1:24 PM
Subject: BASE: antwoord op uw vraag - 0007597714

Geachte heer

Ik heb uw e-mail goed ontvangen.

HD voice quality wordt inderdaad momenteel nog niet ondersteund door het BASE-netwerk. Ik kan u helaas geen precieze datum geven wanneer dit geïplementeerd zou worden op ons netwerk.

Ik hoop u hiermee voldoende geïnformeerd te hebben.

Met vriendelijke groeten

Tom
BASEbusiness Support

Kunt u de historiek van de e-mail(s) telkens meesturen voor een vlotte afhandeling van uw vraag?
Nog vragen? Aarzel dan niet om ons te contacteren via uw gsm op het gratis nummer 1940 of via e-mail naar BASEbusiness.support@kpngroup.be.

This is the most interesting comment I've seen here yet. I wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone 5 was just ahead of AT&T and Verizon and they're playing catchup with HD voice. How sad. I hope all these people get their act together soon and get this right.

6.1 seems to have, in the main, improved call quality for those calling me (O2 UK). Sometimes I'm still a bit faint to them, but nothing like what it was (when they could hardly hear me at all).

I have the same robotic/digital sound problem, the sound is also quite laggy when this appears.In my experience the problem has gotten worse after the 6.1 update. I rarely experienced this when I first got the phone (on release date), but the problem is comming more ofthen now and sometimes I have to call back 2-3 times to make it disapear, sometimes it appears in the middle of a call too.

Device: iPhone5

Ios: 6.1

Carrier: Telia (Sweden) 3G/GPRS

The iPhone is a fairly expensive phone and I expect it to work and not to have these major faults regarding the call quality. I think that this is a hardware/firmware problem so please fix this!

Hello, did you try to investigate if it not by poor 3G signal and HD voice combination ?

It looks like t-mobile Czech Republic support HD voice see here:

Jako první operátor v České republice přinášíme exkluzivně pouze našim zákazníkům nejmodernější zvukovou kvalitu hovoru - HD Voice. Díky využití širšího frekvenčního pásma se tak volající mohou těšit na věrnější a srozumitelnější přenos hlasu výrazně potlačující šumy v okolí. Vylepšenou kvalitu volání lze využít v 3G síti, která je momentálně dostupná pro více než 65% tuzemské populace.

• Za tímto účelem je spuštěna speciální hlasová linka 4004.
• Po zavolání na toto bezplatného číslo se zákazník dozví, zda má aktivní vysokou kvalitu zvukového přenosu HD Voice.

I have one friend on t-mobile and no problems at all and other with problems - either it is HW issue of iPhone or signal on t-mobile ??

Hi, same problemm here. But indead when I turn of 3G then I don't have the problemm anymore.

Shouldn't there be a button to turn of the HD voice?

Hope it's solved rapidly.

Can someone help? I have tried everything with Verizon. Calls are awful. Apple tells me my 4th iPhone 5 is fine and that the carrier is having the problem. I am considering dumping Verizon and switching back to AT&T. As far as I'm concerned Verizon has breached our contract by never providing me with a usable line. Does anyone have a reliable experience switching to AT&T? I had them before and they were pretty awful too with dropped calls and lousy customer service. Any advice? I'm looking for real people btw, not paid brand advocates. Thanks!

Hey bud, if you choose to go to AT&T, don't expect anything less than the same issues you are having. I am with AT&T and have also had 3 iPhone 5 replacements and still a no go. I call apple and they say its AT&T's fault and then I call AT&T to hear the same thing about it being apples fault. I have had over 3 cases with AT&T and still wondering what they heck they are going to do about this issue. Apparently, they have an urgent team that handles issues from the people that won't put up with **** anymore and are demanding that the issue be fixed. So if you want to join AT&T, it's going to be a gamble. I'm about to just go with the Galaxy note 2 at this point :(.

Good luck and keep us posted to see what has been done :-)

Gabe, I'm going to stick it out with Verizon. Thanks so much for your thoughts. I had a feeling this was the case. Hate to go through all that and then find out it's the same problem. My guess is that some of these carriers have not yet caught up to Apple's HD voice technology in all areas. What a pain. Good luck. Hope we all get a fix and I hope that fix isn't the 5S because we'll be stuck with the 5.

As Scorpy75said, turning 3G off seems to "fix" the problem. I'll go where there is exelent 3G reseption and turn it on again to try replicate the issue with full service.

If I don't replay to this thread again it means that atleast my issue is due to bad 3G service.