iPhone 5 bad call voice quality

I will try the same (if ATT is not able to help me in a few minutes), is this happening to you 100 percent of the time also? your description is exactly the same (in terms of higher pitch vs. lower pitch voices). I will check back to see how yours goes... if I learn anything new from this i will definitely post it right away

Restoring didn't help. Apple told me to call back tomorrow which is what I will do. I probably have to return the phone, which isn't really fun since the store where I bought it will probably not have any replacements on hand and I might have to live with the problem until they have more phones arrive.

After reading SupraJoos and benfromholyhead's post suggesting wifi may play a role, I thought about the dozen or so calls over the past day or 2. The 4 or 5 good calls I had were all while driving between cities where there was no wifi for miles. Most (if not all) of the "terrible" calls have been from inside my house, on the porch, at my office across town, etc

Which incidentally all have wifi networks I connect to. I also have noticed if I walk down to the end of the driveway the call quality seems to improve, although still not crystal clear.

I'm glad this discussion has some legs, now Apple just needs to fix the **** problem already.

I have the same issues with WIFI this week - in the office and at home with WIFI around, the calls are horrible, but out in a parking lot without WIFI around, the calls were much cleaner.

Not sure if it's because of the actual buildings knocking out the cellular signal or the WIFI causing interference.

For all of the people linking the call quality issue to wifi, does turning off the wifi radio help? Or do we think there is some sort of crosstalk bewteen radios?

I'm having the same issues. Called AT&T and did everything they asked to try and fix the problem. All options provided by AT&T were failures. I was told to bring the phone to Apple. Call clarity is awful practically useless, wifi keeps failing and Apples maps is an epic failure. I love Apple products, because they work out of the box. I've never had any issues until now and it causes some concern. It's all about quality and if Apple starts laying eggs it'll be all over faster than LTE. I really hope my trip to the Apple store will be positive and they'll be able to address the call clarity issue.

spincast, my issue has nothing to do with wifi, i disabled wifi and my issue still affects ALL calls (not just some). I disabled LTE, same result. Everything else on the phone works fine (wifi is good, speed is fast, connection is good, etc...), but the call quality sounds like im on a deformed low volume speakerphone... sounds really awkward. im heading to the ATT store in a few minutes... if it doesnt work out, ill head to the apple store tonight... will post an update

That would imply the incoming voice decoder does some kind of quality degradation depending on signal quality. But how exactly would it affect only certain phone samples, and how would it not be caught in quality control?

I just did a few quick test calls (to the same automated service, for consistency) and it does not matter if I'm connected to a 5 or 2.4 GHz WiFi network or turn WiFi off completely, everything yelds the same result.

I don't see how moving to an area with no WiFi around would help as the signal from the access points are several orders of magnitude lower than that from the phone's own WiFi transmitter.

Same issues here, BUT are you using the earpods? That seems to be the identified problem for me, haven't used the phone feature up to the ear as much yet, but the earpods make every call sound choppy and the voice on the other end go in and out ever other second, swithcing to the earphones that came with the 4s problem gone. There are other posts on macrumors forums about this too. Very dissapointing. I'm on verizon Iphone 5, LTE enabled and available in Los Angeles.I'm coming from ATT so for a minute i thought it was Verizon but reading these posts not sure, sounds like the phone/earbuds. What a bum out

Nope, I'm using the same Sennheiser in-ear headset as I used for my iPhone 4. It sounds great when playing back music on the iPhone 5, the only thing with quality issues are the phone calls.

Same problem here. White iPhone 5 16GB VZW model. Doesn't always happen, and I've even been on conference calls and only had trouble hearing a few of the people, but when I drop and call back in with a different phone, I can hear everyone. Makes the phone unusable when this occurs, so I hope that they fix this soon. In the meantime, this can no longer be my primary phone, which is sad.

This is the most puzzling post in this thread. Now I'm truly baffled!

I am sending my 32gb iPhone 5 back as a DOA today. My replacement has already arrived. When I fired up the new one and tested it out, I experienced the same issues of digitized, choppy, monotone sounding voices during phone calls. This is very disappointing and I'm not quite sure what to do from here. Come on Apple, this has to be something you can fix. Bad call quality is so 1999 and completely unacceptable.

I have 2 iPhone 5 phones. My wife and I switched from AT&T to VZW. We both had an iPhone 4. We got them via mail on launch day. I actually ordered 3. We have not activated the 3rd, I plan to activate it tomorrow since the person who will use the phone is available to activate it. I have a black 16gb and I really have not had the problem described above. My wife has a 16gb white phone and her call quality is horrible most of the time. We have tried lots of things. Disabling LTE, wifi, and a network settings reset. I plan to restore the phone tomorrow but I also have an appointment @ an apple store and will probably try to get it swapped. I have a buddy who went from a 4 to a 5 on AT&T. His is a black one like mine and has not had a single voice quality issue. My wife's phone is unusable at times and I have witnessed it sounding like what you have all described above. I am hoping the swap tomorrow will fix it, but I am doubtful. I'll try and replace to this with my findings as I love the phone, but hate that my wife's is so unusable.

I had the same issue with a ported iPhone 5 from my AT&T number to Verizon. I switched my SIM from my phone to my wife's Verizon iPhone 5 and the issue now occured on her phone where it was not occuring with her SIM. I just got the SIM replaced at the Apple store and the call quality is now good. I would recommend everyone get a new SIM if you are having voice quality issues.