The iPhone Microphone Problem
I purchased a new iPhone 15 Pro from one of Australia’s largest electronics retailers in mid-January 2024.
After successfully transferring across all my apps and data the phone was ready to use, and for a while it worked perfectly.
After a few weeks the microphone stopped working, at least for all phone calls using the device’s native ‘Phone’ app. I could still hear the other end of the line just fine but they couldn’t hear anything I said.
I tested whether this was affecting other apps like Voice Memos and Whatsapp (calls), and was surprised to find that for those apps the microphone continued to work.
I searched high and low on forums and blogs as to whether this was an issued commonly experienced. I actually couldn’t find much at all, other than some articles advising you to clean your microphone, which can be susceptible to a build up of dust particles. Apple even seems to provide this as the main do-it-yourself solution.
But I was unconvinced this was a genuine possibility in my case given the phone was only a few weeks old and I had not exposed it to any especially dusty environments.
The Solution
At a loss as at what to do I took the phone back to the retailer where I bought it. Given the unique problem, which had little-to-no coverage online, I was expecting it would be replaced once I could demonstrate the issue, which I did by calling the tech assistant’s mobile from a few aisles away.
Before it could be replaced though the store insisted first I turn the device off and back on, and then that I processed the latest available software update. (I would have thought this would have happened automatically, but it hadn’t.)
It took about 30 minutes to download and run the latest software update. To my absolute surprise, once the phone turned back on after the update, the microphone was actually working for the Phone app. Good as new.
So I have absolutely no idea why, but it turns out that if like me, you’ve experienced that with your later model iPhone, especially iPhone 15 Pro, the microphone abruptly stops working, then what I’d recommend doing before anything else is ensuring that you’ve downloaded the latest software update and rebooting your phone.
I’m not a techie when it comes to phones. I had no idea whether this was simply a software anomaly and the phone is otherwise perfectly good; or alternatively whether it remains susceptible to microphone issues and this software update provides a good band-aid fix.
If you’ve had a similar experiences or have any take on whether it goes beyond a software bug, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section.