No sound on phone in calls - have I missed something ?

Monanore · 15 September 2024 at 9:30AM

The sound on my phone has suddenly stopped working in calls – the caller cannot hear me and I cannot hear them. The call does connect. Texting is working.

Samsung Galaxy J3(2016). Android 5.1.1. No recent changes or new apps ( very few anyway ).

I’ve checked or done the following and nothing has worked :

Updates
Sound mode on
Volume settings OK
The sound works in diagnostics, so it's not hardware. ( Diagnostics enabled via *#0*# in phone app, speaker test and mic test options both have sound )
No sound using headphones, so it’s not stuck in headphone mode.
Bluetooth disabled in case it thought it was using a paired device
Do not disturb is off
Mute all sounds in accessibility is off
Google voice is off
Adapt sound personalization works – it plays a tune
Boot in safe mode no joy
Factory reset no joy

Can you suggest anything I might have missed ? Thanks !

PHK · 15 September 2024 at 9:50AM

Does your version of the J3 have VoLTE (VoLTE is only available on some versions of the J3 and is needed to make calls over 4G, otherwise the phone will drop to 3G or 2G)

Most of the networks have either switched off 3G or are in the process of doing so.

2G has limited bandwidth and it’s not unknown for calls to connect but not to be able to hear one side or another.

At the same time, some networks are beginning to migrate customers away from dropping to 2G (in various ways) so the bandwidth can be used for emergency calls, internet of things and machine to machine.

The other possibility is that it’s simply faulty. To be very honest, it’s well past its intended lifetime and running ten versions behind Android, so there are likely to be issues.

Monanore · 15 September 2024 at 10:21AM

@PHK

Thanks very much.

Network mode shows LTE/WCDMA/GSM, and the three.co.uk device support has 4g(VoLTE) ticked as available, provided the phone was bought from 3 - which it was.