The title is a spoiler, but I was a little surprised this worked.
A family member was complaining of faint earpiece volume. So, even though I didn’t see much there on the speaker grill, I cleaned it with various things and the audio volume was still faint. I tried various things again including a small brush and a SIM tool to scrape stuff out but nothing helped, and I couldn’t see any debris anyway.
Because of the problematic iPhone 6s, I negotiated a new iPhone 8 for her from her carrier for almost free and then took over her iPhone 6s and brought it to a repair shop. The guy confirmed the audio problem, and then disassembled it, installed a new speaker and proximity sensor and reassembled it, but the low volume persisted. He then disassembled it again, and replaced the old parts. Because he couldn’t fix it, he did not charge me anything, so I felt bad and bought an accessory off him. I played with the hearing aid settings, etc, and nothing helped.
Then I went home and used rubbing alcohol on Q-tips to clean it yet again, even though I couldn’t see any debris. Now it works perfectly.
The two clues were that:
1) New parts did nothing.
2) Some weird dude on the iFixit forums said that various cleaning methods didn’t work for him, but licking it and then sucking it out made it work. 🤢 And yes I’m being serious.
www.ifixit.com
I was not about to try option 2, so that’s when I tried the rubbing alcohol method.
A family member was complaining of faint earpiece volume. So, even though I didn’t see much there on the speaker grill, I cleaned it with various things and the audio volume was still faint. I tried various things again including a small brush and a SIM tool to scrape stuff out but nothing helped, and I couldn’t see any debris anyway.
Because of the problematic iPhone 6s, I negotiated a new iPhone 8 for her from her carrier for almost free and then took over her iPhone 6s and brought it to a repair shop. The guy confirmed the audio problem, and then disassembled it, installed a new speaker and proximity sensor and reassembled it, but the low volume persisted. He then disassembled it again, and replaced the old parts. Because he couldn’t fix it, he did not charge me anything, so I felt bad and bought an accessory off him. I played with the hearing aid settings, etc, and nothing helped.
Then I went home and used rubbing alcohol on Q-tips to clean it yet again, even though I couldn’t see any debris. Now it works perfectly.
The two clues were that:
1) New parts did nothing.
2) Some weird dude on the iFixit forums said that various cleaning methods didn’t work for him, but licking it and then sucking it out made it work. 🤢 And yes I’m being serious.
Ear speaker low sound when making calls - iPhone 6
I have a customer that brought his iPhone 6 saying his ear speaker volume was very low and he could barely hear what the other person was saying even in a quiet room. I did some tests and when I use the recorder to record my voice and listen to it through the ear speaker the sound is crisp...
www.ifixit.com
I was not about to try option 2, so that’s when I tried the rubbing alcohol method.
