Cant hear me? In Call Mic (Solution)

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siralex241

Senior Member
May 17, 2009
248
14
Chicago
Recently, my Nokia 920 has had problems with the in call microphone, tellme, and other apps that use any type of voice. Many friends and family would be saying "I can't hear you speak louder", "you still there", "your breaking up", and my favorite "you sound like your underwater". I searched over the internet and noticed this is a prevalent problem that tends to emerge after months to a year of use. Many found one solution in that the Nokia 920 has a mic that picks up your voice at the bottom of the phone and a noise cancellation second mic on the top of the phone located next to the headphone jack;five pin size holes in a circle. What I did was use a duster can (meant for electronics) and thoroughly cleaned all mics on the phone; since, I had just gone to the beach and sand and dust was plugging the mic holes. With the ambient noise mic with a finger over it confirms that the mic needs to be free and clear of debris to function correctly otherwise it will cancel out all sound by not being able to differentiate voice from ambient noise. I did not see a post about this so here it is...feel free to comment. Hope this helps out the community.

Update- I read about newer Lumia models having a bigger noise cancellation hole so I took it upon myself to make the five pin size holes a little bigger with a thumb tack. I did not push on the mic part inside of the phone...only to make the holes a 1mm wider. I have not experience anyone saying they cannot hear me anymore. I figure this to be a permanent fix. So far, I have been using my phone for 2 months with this hardware fix with no problems. I thought I would update everyone in case cleaning the mic didn't work.

Update 2- I have been a part of the developer preview program since the beginning it was created. When I first updated to the developer preview my secondary mic completely stopped working. I soft reset, hard rest, downgraded to previous stable firmware hard reset & soft reset; nothing worked and seemed to be persistent across all software versions. So, I ended up replacing the secondary mic and head jack and it totally resolved my issues. I analyzed the old and new secondary mic head jack and realized there was clear circuitry differences. I assume that Nokia had failing hardware originally in our earlier phones for many of the earlier Nokia 920 and later updated the secondary mics to an improved version.
 
Last edited:

ellokomen

Senior Member
Nov 30, 2009
292
26
I have been speaking via the speaker for months now because of this, thank you for the solution.
 

akamp

New member
Oct 19, 2011
3
0
Seattle
Recently, my Nokia 920 has had problems with the in call microphone, tellme, and other apps that use any type of voice. Many friends and family would be saying "I can't hear you speak louder", "you still there", "your breaking up", and my favorite "you sound like your underwater". I searched over the internet and noticed this is a prevalent problem that tends to emerge after months to a year of use. Many found one solution in that the Nokia 920 has a mic that picks up your voice at the bottom of the phone and a noise cancellation second mic on the top of the phone located next to the headphone jack;five pin size holes in a circle. What I did was use a duster can (meant for electronics) and thoroughly cleaned all mics on the phone; since, I had just gone to the beach and sand and dust was plugging the mic holes. With the ambient noise mic with a finger over it confirms that the mic needs to be free and clear of debris to function correctly otherwise it will cancel out all sound by not being able to differentiate voice from ambient noise. I did not see a post about this so here it is...feel free to comment. Hope this helps out the community.

Thanks Man. You saved me.. I thought I damaged the mic when i dropped it. Such an easy fix. Thanks a ton. :cyclops:
 

sohalevi

New member
Apr 5, 2014
1
0
Thanks!

Recently, my Nokia 920 has had problems with the in call microphone, tellme, and other apps that use any type of voice. Many friends and family would be saying "I can't hear you speak louder", "you still there", "your breaking up", and my favorite "you sound like your underwater". I searched over the internet and noticed this is a prevalent problem that tends to emerge after months to a year of use. Many found one solution in that the Nokia 920 has a mic that picks up your voice at the bottom of the phone and a noise cancellation second mic on the top of the phone located next to the headphone jack;five pin size holes in a circle. What I did was use a duster can (meant for electronics) and thoroughly cleaned all mics on the phone; since, I had just gone to the beach and sand and dust was plugging the mic holes. With the ambient noise mic with a finger over it confirms that the mic needs to be free and clear of debris to function correctly otherwise it will cancel out all sound by not being able to differentiate voice from ambient noise. I did not see a post about this so here it is...feel free to comment. Hope this helps out the community.

Update- I read about newer Lumia models having a bigger noise cancellation hole so I took it upon myself to make the five pin size holes a little bigger with a thumb tack. I did not push on the mic part inside of the phone...only to make the holes a 1mm wider. I have not experience anyone saying they cannot hear me anymore. I figure this to be a permanent fix. So far, I have been using my phone for 2 months with this hardware fix with no problems. I thought I would update everyone in case cleaning the mic didn't work.

Thanks very much. You saved me and my Lumia 920! ;)
 

huhmz

Member
Apr 26, 2011
8
2
Pictures

Can anyone post some pictures of where the microphones are and what you have done to make it better? I just got mine returned from service and they replaced the microphone but I on my very first call the person on the other end of the line had trouble hearing me...
 

McHale

Senior Member
Nov 18, 2005
1,221
19
B.F.E. Illinois
Thanks for this. In the last couple of weeks people said I sounded like I was talking under a blanket or through a towel. Started digging around and found this then looked up a video on how to open the 920. I used a sewing needle to open up the mic holes and it fixed the problem completely.

-Mc
 

Mateosz

New member
Jul 19, 2015
1
0
"secondary mic and head jack"

Hello! Your post is so helpful, but i dont really understand that "replacing the secondary mic and head jack" It means that replace the bottom mic and the upper mic or replace the upper mic for a new mic.

Thanks a lot for you answer!
 

technokhafan

New member
Jul 27, 2015
1
0
I had a problem with my speaking mic (I had the ability to use Cortana and record voices) so I cleaned the mic and others can hear me while talking but I cant use my mic in apps and Cortana I had soft&hard reset but the problem exists.
Please give me suggestion .
Thanks a lot.
 

mwemsy

New member
Jan 21, 2013
1
0
Alternative solution

Thanks for this solution. An alternative one could be a quick observation of the casing grill, dirt filter and microphone. In my case your solution didn't work but I realized that the dirt filter was misaligned with the casing grill and therefore sound was blocked by this. I used a heating gun to soften the dirt filter and removed it, re-aligned it with the grill casing and ultimately the microphone. This fixed the whole voice muffled on caller's end issue. Hope this helps out someone.
 

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    Recently, my Nokia 920 has had problems with the in call microphone, tellme, and other apps that use any type of voice. Many friends and family would be saying "I can't hear you speak louder", "you still there", "your breaking up", and my favorite "you sound like your underwater". I searched over the internet and noticed this is a prevalent problem that tends to emerge after months to a year of use. Many found one solution in that the Nokia 920 has a mic that picks up your voice at the bottom of the phone and a noise cancellation second mic on the top of the phone located next to the headphone jack;five pin size holes in a circle. What I did was use a duster can (meant for electronics) and thoroughly cleaned all mics on the phone; since, I had just gone to the beach and sand and dust was plugging the mic holes. With the ambient noise mic with a finger over it confirms that the mic needs to be free and clear of debris to function correctly otherwise it will cancel out all sound by not being able to differentiate voice from ambient noise. I did not see a post about this so here it is...feel free to comment. Hope this helps out the community.

    Update- I read about newer Lumia models having a bigger noise cancellation hole so I took it upon myself to make the five pin size holes a little bigger with a thumb tack. I did not push on the mic part inside of the phone...only to make the holes a 1mm wider. I have not experience anyone saying they cannot hear me anymore. I figure this to be a permanent fix. So far, I have been using my phone for 2 months with this hardware fix with no problems. I thought I would update everyone in case cleaning the mic didn't work.

    Update 2- I have been a part of the developer preview program since the beginning it was created. When I first updated to the developer preview my secondary mic completely stopped working. I soft reset, hard rest, downgraded to previous stable firmware hard reset & soft reset; nothing worked and seemed to be persistent across all software versions. So, I ended up replacing the secondary mic and head jack and it totally resolved my issues. I analyzed the old and new secondary mic head jack and realized there was clear circuitry differences. I assume that Nokia had failing hardware originally in our earlier phones for many of the earlier Nokia 920 and later updated the secondary mics to an improved version.