Muffled iPhone Microphone but Speaker Works? How to Fix

Use Data Only on LTE

Cellular Data Enable LTE Off or Data Only

When making phone calls on your iPhone do your callers complain about your voice being distant or muted?  Does your speaker sound ok but your normal microphone sound horrible?  

Many blogs claim this is a hardware issue and you should fix or upgrade your phone.  However, this is not true and probably a scam to get you to upgrade your phone.  Here is how to fix the problem disabling a voice over LTE on your phone.  

We discovered through the help of Apple tech support that using data only over Enable LTE helps improve audio call quality.  For some reason voice over LTE might not work well on iPhone 5, 7, 8 and even new models.  

Here is how to test if turning off VOLTE will help improve your call quality.  

1)  Test your microphone with the voice memo app on your phone

2)  Go to cellular data and turn on data only on Enable LTE

3)  Test a voice call and test a Facetime audio only call.  

This should help you fix your voice quality on your phone without having to upgrade to a new phone.  

According the the Apple tech support person this LTE voice problem happens with all carriers. 

VoLTE vs Wifi Calling

Wireless carrier voice revenues are declining almost to zero (many fees now include unlimited voice and SMS texts, charging only on the basis of data consumed).  Not to mention the reliability of voice coverage is on the declines as well with carrier networks seeing congestion in many areas throughout the World.

Have carriers lost control of voice and messaging services with the onset of the mobile data tsunami?  It appears to be that way seeing the growth of over the top messaging services.  Many wireless consumers suffering from poor quality or non-existent voice service at home have three main technical solutions to consider.

• Install a femtocell, (often termed residential small cell) 
• Use Wi-Fi calling 
• Install a repeater

The wireless industry seems uncertain of which direction to take for future voice delivery.  VoLTE which stand for (Voice over LTE) seems the most popular choice and is considered by many to be the path of the future. However, the complexity of introducing the service late and alongside existing 2G/3G has delayed launch.  Despite the hype at the last CTIA conference, few operators and few devices actively support it today.  This could obviously change quickly over the coming year. Sprint's CTO advised they will wait until its more mature, offering HD Voice over 3G instead.

Several operators are introducing Voice over Wi-Fi including operators T-Mobile. This is quite independent of VoLTE and comes in several flavors - many operators offer a separate App that can be a bit clunky and inconvenient to use. Alternatively, the new iPhone iOS8 Wi-Fi calling feature is fully integrated as a seamless service - making it as easy to use as standard cellular calls.  Most T-Mobile android phones offer built in Wifi calling as well.  The iPhone could be a big trigger for greater take-up of Wifi calling and may affect sales of residential Femtocells.  Approximately, 10 million residential Femtocells deployed worldwide.