iPhone 7 Plus Phone Call Sound Quality

iPhone 7+, 256GB. Voice quality was excellent for both phone calls and voice memo recording on 10.1.1. It is the same for 10.2.

My 7+ is terrible during hand held calls but for some reason is much better during Bluetooth calls in the car with the phone in my pocket. Very odd....

Apple needs to acknowledge there is a serious problem with the new iPhone 7. I have heard only some of the new iPhone 7 and 7 plus phones have this problem suggesting enough people are experiencing this that it is either a hardware or software glitch. I want the issue resolved or I want my phone replaced. I can't have everyone saying they can't hear me.

Ok, boys and girls - I made it through the whole 20 pages of this thread (and keeping up with the deleting posts 😉), just as Lawrence did and I too have some observations. 🙂😀

First - I totally agree that there are several issues, that we are discussing here. However, most of us have problems with the bad call quality for the people on the other end of the line (in my case they said that I was becoming distant or just could not hear me). It is not clear though how often it occurs, as most people only report the "me-too" symptom. I can say that in my case I had only a few calls, when the caller said they could not hear me or I was dropping out. I must admit though that I had the phone for like 3-4 weeks and was not making a lot of calls (3-4 day, 1-2 min in length). I think that most of the problems could be resolved by realigning the phone (I have iPhone 7) so the microphone is closer to mouth - this improved the call quality. So Yes - "you are holding it wrong!" seems like the correct advice from Apple Support/Genus 😐 This issue would therefore be more related to the new noise cancellation protocols and the direction in which the microphones are working (ISSUE 1), as some suggested earlier.

Also - the Voice Memos test - I made the same recordings now with some music playing back from my comptuer on iPhone 7 and 6S. Of course on both you can hear some static humming sound (these are not microphones costing thousands of $), but the recordings from 6S are definitely better - both the music being played back, and the overall noise. On the 7, ALL the recordings are worse:

-the sound is very compressed so the music was difficult to distinguish

-the static humming is much more prominent - and this is most probably due to the microphone being set too sensitive (too much gain). This proves ISSUE 1 being software related. Though some others on this forum are not reporting any issues with this test - please, make sure to compare recordings made in the same conditions with a different phone.

In my case there was however the second problem - ISSUE 2 - a few times, especially when I was having a longer conversation the caller said that there was noticeable buzzing heard, through which they could not hear me. I thought that this must be a carrier issue or signal dropping, but then on 1 of my recordings I heard this buzzing come up, quite randomly. This could not be resolved by adjusting the phone - but in my case it disappeared during the call (only to turn up again and then disappear a few times). I am not sure what the cause could be, but this is also likely a software bug.

/also - updating to 10.2 did not help me with ISSUE 1 when testing Voice Memos/

On a general note, I do hope that this issue gets resolved. I will be doing more testing, and I plan to test also my father's new iPhone 7 - both on the call qaulity and the voice memos.

I am pretty sure that Apple is aware of this issue - from all the different sources reporting issues with phones, they must have this bug somewhere on their list. It might even get to the press at some point - I am curious if Andrew can get something across to the Apple bosses, who might contact him.

Yogasal wrote:

Apple needs to acknowledge there is a serious problem with the new iPhone 7. I have heard only some of the new iPhone 7 and 7 plus phones have this problem suggesting enough people are experiencing this that it is either a hardware or software glitch. I want the issue resolved or I want my phone replaced. I can't have everyone saying they can't hear me.

Call Apple or visit an Apple store and they will replace your phone. Which may fix the problem. To make it easy call with the phone, so they can hear the problem.

We seem to be a very tolerant bunch considering the value of our Iphone 7/7+ which in many cases don't make calls properly. The quality of these phones seems to be very inconsistent, my first 7+ had poor call quality and the battery required recharging by around 6pm every day, my replacement 7+ exhibits the same call quality but the battery is still at 50% by 6pm for the same type of usage. Whilst Apple have offered me another replacement 7+ I'm reluctant to accept their offer for fear of ending up with another 7+ with both call and battery issues at least for now I have good battery life. Every single hand call I make or receive is terrible, I always end up shouting to try and get the person at the other end to hear me but my voice keeps breaking up, there's no such thing as taking a private call on my phone because everyone around me can here me shouting, can you here me, is that better, can you still hear me. What a load of ******* roll on the S8/Note 8, think I'm going back to Android once this phone is usable and therefore sellable. My romance with Apple is coming to an end I think, no MacPro or Macbook Air upgrade which means I may as well sell my Ipad Pro, I for one am sick of this.

EVERYBODY ARE WE GETTING TO HUNG UP WITH COMPLETING ALL THESE TESTS AND FORGETTING THE BASICS, IT'S AS EASY AS THIS, THE BASIC FUNCTION OF ANY MOBILE PHONE IS TO MAKE PHONE CALLS, I'VE HAD TWO IPHONE 7+ BOTH OF WHICH EXHIBITED TERRIBLE CALL QUALITY, WHY OH WHY OH WHY APPLE. OH AND THE 10.2 UPDATE MADE ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE SUGGESTING APPLE AREN'T DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think I might have made a step forward!

Shane in Executive Relations called in response to my email to Tim Cook. He heard the poor voice quality for himself until I plugged my headphones back in. He advised me to do a "Erase all contents and settings" to totally reset the phone (as I had done previously with Apple Support) but to select "Setup as new iPhone" rather than "Restore from iCloud Backup" (which Apple support had previously advised me to do). You then enter your Apple ID and password to connect to iCloud via WiFi. The only thing Shane forgot to mention is that you should remove two factor authentication before you start this process (unless you have other Apple devices connected to your Apple ID - which I don't). I didn't know this and as a result I could not verify with my phone or receive the SMS verification code which was texted to my, now partially setup, iPhone 7+. I put the SIM card into my old Nokia 930 and had the verification code resent. This allowed me to complete the 'new' phone setup process. Unfortunately all my Apps and settings have gone! I need to reinstall and set them up with usernames and passwords etc....what a pain, particularly as it's deleted my Microsoft 2FA accounts held in Microsoft Authenticator!

I'm pleased to report that, for the first time since I bought the phone, I've been able to make a hand-held voice call without having to use the headphones! I'll upload a video showing the big difference in quality following the reset (see my profile for the external links).

I shall do more testing tomorrow with some normal calls but a couple I made to my voicemail earlier sound significantly better.

Given my hardware has not changed there must be a software setting in the iCloud backup which caused this issue for me. I'm tempted to do a restore from the iCloud backup to see if the problem returns. I had an iPhone4 about 4 years ago. I've not had an Apple phone since then. I wonder if the problem might be connected to my iCloud account having been last used with an iPhone4? Has anyone successfully moved from an iPhone 4 to iPhone 7+ using existing iCloud settings?

I think the important bit here is to "Setup as new iPhone" following a full reset.

A question for the people who have had multiple replacements...did you "Setup as new iPhone" or did you "restore from iCloud" each time?

I hope this helps everyone else having problems!

That is interesting Andrew. But my iPhone bought in late September was my first ever one. And in one of the meetings with a Genuis we completely reset it and made a call using nothing of my backup or anything other than my SIM card and it was still bad. Also, I'm not sure if having to set everything up from scratch to get a phone to operate as its most basic function is something to be celebrated.

Although, good that a fix of sorts is available. Having to completely bypass the backup to get it to work is still something Apple needs to sort. Having (only temporarily in the end) moved from Android, I was impressed at how the backup from iCloud worked on all the handsets they kept throwing at me before I gave up. To buy a 7+ and then be told it won't work properly unless you bypass Apples own backup system is not good enough. Interesting update though

Hi Andrew,

So - the "solution" with the phone having to be set-up as new is not a very convenient one - exactly for the hassle of redownloading of apps, settings, missing the messages. But it does show, that this is definitely a software bug.

I have been doing back-ups since the iPhone 4 through 5S, 6 Plus, 6S and now 7 for the last few years. I remember an incredibly irritating battery bug in iOS 4 or 5, when my iPhone 4 would have battery depleted overnight by 80% (the "in use" and "standby" times were the same). Since then I needed to set up the phone as new and then used this backup for later phones. Another battery bug at around 5S made me set-up yet another "new phone", and this back-up I've been using until now I think.

There is one other thing - if you set up from iCloud back-up, it is not really a full copy of the phone. To make a 1-1 copy including passwords you need to use iTunes. Then even all app data, downloads ect ect is restored.... along with potential bugs. But there might also be bugs in the iCloud backups as well 🙂

Either way - please do some testing - I'm curious if your issue will be finally resolved.

From what I remember from people in this thread, some have set-up the phones as new - and their problems were still there....

Apple Support had me set up my 7+ as a new phone on more than one occasion with no improvement in call quality. Pip129 I agree with you what is the point of having a backup and restore process that causes issues if you restore a backup to a different model IPhone. After all, I thought one function of the restore process is to facilitate restoring your old Iphone to a newer model when you upgrade. In my opinion not being able restore makes a mockery of ICloud.

I'll test with some real calls tomorrow and report on how well the other people hear me. I've been forced to use headphones to make calls until now. I agree it's far from an ideal solution! The biggest pain is reinstalling and setting up all the apps as I use computer generated 20 character random passwords which are different for all accounts! Oh, well at least I can make phone calls again!

Both iPhone 7 my first and replacement were updated with a back up done through iTunes and not the cloud.

So I have setup my second phone as a "new" iPhone and the problem was surprisingly still there. I have on the third phone setup as a new iphone, disabled the hearing aid thing and noise cancellation, reset network settings, new SIM card, numerous resets, tried data only, no case or screen protector, tried wifi only calling and nothing has worked, and a new Apple ID. Verizon even disabled my LTE and it was the same issue. Also did connected diagnostics with Apple and the guy couldn't hear me but said the phone is working. Now Verizon has me marking my calls by dialing #832 after every call I get. At this point I don't even want a iPhone anymore I want to go back to android since I can't use my phone to talk to anyone.

Oh man..... hiyat - it seems you tried everything..

Now I'm thinking that some of us here on this forum might be the "unlucky" ones to get and keep getting faulty units. Apart from the possible software problems with noise cancellation, there might be batches of phones which e.g. have 1 of the 4 microphones out of order - and if the phone switches to one of them, the audio cannot be heard on the other end of the line. If you have this bad call quality all the time, it would be probably a mixed hardware/software issue.

In my case - the bad quality is occassional and appears randomly, which would suggest a software problem I think.

I have and that's what's so frustrating. Now my wife has the 6s plus and can make a phone call sitting in the same spot and no problem what's so ever. So I don't see how it could be Verizon's issue either the 6s plus works fine and the 7 sounds muffled, distant and sometimes only hear every other word.