Help! Do I need a new phone? Can't hear when people talk unless on speaker

[itsgettingweird]

I have an old iPhone 7s. It's a good 4 years old.

If people call or you call you can barely hear what they are saying unless you put it on speaker (and I DO NOT want to be one of those people around town 😂)

I have looked online and it doesn't seem to provide the answers for this particular problem.

MNers are BRILLIANT and wise with matters of needing new things or not.

So wise ones. Is my phone fecked? Do I need a new one? Or is there something I'm missing that I can try?!

TIA

@itsgettingweird - I don't have the answer, but I'm so glad you posted, as exactly the same thing is happening to me - I have an I-Phone 6. Hoping we can tap into the brilliance of Mumsnetters to get a solution :)

🤞

It's the fact the speaker works but the calls are too quiet I can't get my head around.

It's stumped me 😂

Same happened to me. Struggled on for ages thinking I was getting deaf until someone else used it and said it was the phone. Luckily got a replacement of the same model just before I needed to make quite a few calls.

What's it like with headphones?

It could be that the speaker grille is full of fluff, earwax or similar. Or the speaker could be faulty. It should be easily repairable at any decent mobile repair shop.

The phone may well use a separate component for this than other sound - I've repaired a samsung which had a separate earpiece speaker failed. Just one component to replace. So any local phone repair service may be able to deal with it; however it still involves opening up the phone and re-sealing, so don't expect it to cost nothing.

Or since it's old you just accept it's one broken feature and make do with headphones etc. Who makes phone calls anyway? 😛

Unfortunately I make lots of calls.

I need it to work!

Have looked and can get a new in one on a good deal atm but before I committed I wanted to see if I was missing something!

Looks like my phone is fucked and fixing it will be more of an outlay than taking on a phone contract (currently I'm sim only after I'd paid off the last phone through a contract!

Mine is the same but works perfectly well with AirPods

I’ve had exactly the same issue with my iPhone 7. I’ve decided to replace it and the new one works so much better.

This was the first sign my old iPhone was dying I'm afraid
There are some very good pre owned sites around
Back market is one I was going to use until my DS2 gave me his old one

UPDATE - GOOD NEWS!

I decided to go onto town hoping it would be cooler than anywhere else and into vodaphone!

I said I thought it was dying - they cleaned the earphone microphone and voila! Works perfectly and I can hear again.

So for all those who are having the same problem take it to your provider and they may be able to attack it with a toothbrush like they did mine! (Or try it yourself if you're brave enough!)