iPhone 5 bad call voice quality

Thanks for clearing that up joos, I thought you said you did. Did they comment on the problem / have you been in further contact with them? I have not contacted support yet. Plus I live 80 miles from an apple shop.

I wouldn't say it's fixed just yet, but the 3-4 calls I had today also seemed much better. Let's hope they're working overtime to get this resolved.

fixed by who and how ?

Not necessarily fixed. Although it seems to be improving for me at least. I'll need a couple more days with clear calls before I suggest mine is fixed.

I am the OP's brother. We were talking about it and it seems to only be affected when he is in/near his condo which is 4 stories tall with a lot of other residents. We are thinking that maybe the wifi that could be causing the problems. He has Verizon Fios there. The problem seems to goes away when he is out and about away from the condo's. Does everyone else have the problems only when they are near a wifi source?

Happened on wifi in work around about 6 APs on that floor / in range. Happened driving past a McDonnalds and they have powerful wifi...

Just got my network extender from VZW, and while I have good signal and the call is loud I still have the issue with the sound not being as clear as I'd like it. I do believe this is (at least for me) a network/codec issue.

On the other hand...

The new iPhone does have an updated noise cancelling feature, not just to improve what the person on the other end of the call hears, but to improve what the iPhone user hears as well. One of the mics for this is between the camera and the LED flash.

Over-corrected audio streams often end up sounding auto-tuned. Is it possible some people are holding the phone in a way to block or disturb this mic? Or, giving the users of this forum the benefit of the doubt, could we have a batch of bad noise cancellation mics?

Ben: Is that the only time that is happens is near a wifi source?

It's interesting because when I first purchased the IPhone 5 the call quality seemed very good. By the 3rd day I got sick of the case and removed it and that's when I began having issues with auto-tune/robotic/static.

I live in a condo with many WIFI connections and didn't have a problem with sound quality until I removed the case. It wasn't until after I returned the phone that it dawned on me that the issue could have been related to the antenna or noise cancellation feature being interfered with when not using a case. I did try using the phone on speaker w/ out the case and still noticed the auto-tune, although it didn't seem as severe.

I had something like this happen on my very first voice call (Tele2 network, Sweden, no 4G, 3G on, WiFi on, phone resting on a table and using a headset). With my iPhone 4, call quality was always great (but iOS 6 did change something, as I could hear more of my own voice when using a headset than with previous iOS releases). With my new iPhone 5, the other person sounded overly compressed (low bitrate) and the phone cut out too much background noise in a way reminiscent of some Android phones. It also didn't let me hear much of my own voice which is something I don't like - a phone is supposed to let a certain percentage of what goes into the microphone through to your own speaker. However, I had no problem understanding the person at the other end (the quality was just really poor) and she could her me clearly.

I think this is a software issue as it must have something to do with the audio codec. Of course one call isn't much to go on but the fact that the call quality of my iPhone 4 had a major change between iOS 5 and 6 shows that a lot of things can be changed in software these days. I could just have had a bad connection and maybe I should have redialed but time will tell what this is all about. It does seem unrelated to the network.

And to whoever commented about 1990s analog lines: The late 1990s was probably a high point for the phone network, at least in developed countries. All of the important stuff had gone digital and the overall sound quality was just really, really good. No one had invented VoIP yet so everything was 56 (USA)/64 (Europe) kbit PCM, which made for excellent sound quality.

You just reminded me that I upgraded my iphone 4 from 5.01 to 6, and that's when it really started happening much worse.

I remember articles a couple of years ago that said the software on the iphone was bad when trying to switch from tower to tower, and that the overall 'phone call' part of the software was worse than the the other competition back then.

Maybe in 6, they tried to correct it, but made it worse.

I went back to using my IPhone 4S and also upgraded to IOS 6 and I did notice the call quality was not as good as when using IOS 5. Eventhough the call quality is not as good, it's still much better than what I was getting with IPhone 5 IOS 6.

As someone mentioned prior, it could be an issue with the audio codec used in IOS 6. Just strange more people are not having this issue.

ALL my calls are bad, even listening to voicemails are bad... it sounds fine on speakerphone or on earphones, but on the phone itself it is WAY bad. it sounds like a "partial speakerphone" effect and Its really light (even all full volume), turning off LTE does nothing. Wouldnt really call it static , dropping, or choppy.... but it just sounds like a low frequency speakerphone.. i can hear the person (in terms of what they are saying) but it doesnt sound normal... is this what you guys are having too? its not intermittent, its consistent with 100% of calls. I just got my phone last night 9-27-2012, and I will be going to ATT today to get this checked out.... any feedback on this would help. Thanks!

I called Apple about this and they recommended I first restart the phone (which didn't work) and then restore it using iTunes (which I'm doing right now). I'm not hopeful.

The best description I can come up with is "overly compressed" and like it has had a high pass filter applied to it as it has more problems with low frequencies. Higher frequency female voices are easier to hear than lower frequency females and males.