OT: Problems with Moto G 6-plus Phone

[Roger Mills]

My phone tends to suffer from two problems - which may or may not be related. [Moto g(6)plus, Android 9, Build: PPW29-116-20-28]

Firstly, it sometimes refuses to answer an incoming call. I can tap Accept, or swipe up - depending on what it was doing at the time - but it just goes on ringing until it goes to voicemail.

Secondly, I frequently lose incoming sound in the middle of a call. The person the other end can apparently hear me, but I can't hear them. [The call starts ok with 2-way speech, but this typically happens a minute or so into the call.

Any clues on what to look for?

[The usual mobile/Android groups have not borne fruit, so I'm cross-posting here since this NG is by far the best source of all things technical.]

[newshound]

I've had several Moto G phones of various models over the past few years (currently on an 8). One had a "hard" microphone failure, two others started showing short battery life but associated with the phone, not the battery. In each case after something like 18 months to two years of use. As relatively low cost phones given their performance I just replaced them. I did divert to Huawei for a while but that was unreliable downloading BBC Sounds files. Touch screens seem a little flakey with either cold or wet hands. I've actually never lost or broken a phone, but I tend to regard £100 or so as a throw away sum, whereas I'd be reluctant to risk £500 plus on one. YMMV.

[John Rumm]

I have the same phone on the same OS revision. Not had either of those on mine...

Have had a funny where it makes no sound when ringing, but vibrates still, and works when you answer. A power cycle fixes that.

Does the same happen via bluetooth?

[Chris Green]

Mobile phones seem to live in a wierd "value for money" world of their own. If I spent £100 plus on a piece of technology I would expect it to work pretty well and I certainly wouldn't regard it as "throw away".

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

The fault sounds to me like randomly the perceived gestures are not working or it thinks a gesture has been done but has not. I don't really know if there is a mute caller gesture, but if there is then it might get triggered by a dodgy screen.

Brian

[newshound]

My phone hardware costs me typically £50 a year. Considering how transformative it is, I regard that as amazing value for money.

But I don't feel the need to spend £1000 a year for the latest bells and whistles.

[Chris Green]

Yes, but it doesn't appear to work particularly well! :-)

My current mobile cost £29 and has lasted me some years already. It is pretty good at sending and receiving phone calls and sending and receiving texts which is all I need it to do.

I'm with you there! :-)

[newshound]

I use mine as a satnav and it presents Landranger maps showing your location that are very useable on the ground, you can even download sections where there is no mobile coverage. A lot of web sites now have decent mobile versions too. I don't use it much as a camera but occasionally it is useful, e.g. to photograph a VIN plate when you are hunting for vehicle spares. But I didn't go to smart phones until they dropped to near enough £100.

[Chris Green]

I use an old Moto as my satnav, it has no SIM in it and is thus worth very little which is fortunate because I regularly leave it totally insecure stuck on the front of my 'bike! I run Here! we go as that doesn't need a SIM to work, just its maps and GPS.

I have a proper (but pocketable) camera with a viewfinder, much better to use that *any* mobile phone camera and I have it with me more often than my 'phone.

[Roger Mills]

Do you mean when using it "hands-free" etc.? I don't recall it ever happening on an in-car call - but I make/receive very few of those anyway.

I have discovered that the accessibility function "press power button to end call" was turned on, so I've turned it off. The way I hold the phone during calls could inadvertently cause the power button to be pressed. If that were the problem though, I wouldn't expect the other party to still be able to hear me - but they can.

[John Rumm]

Yup, since then its using the same call data, but "rendering" it on different hardware. So that would bypass the audio amp and speaker sections of the phone.

If it loses audio mid call, can you still get other sounds out of the phone (just wondering if this is hardware or software)

That sounds like it would end the call.

[John Rumm]

Indeed, although one irritating aspect of it is that the hardware will typically last longer than the support from the manufacturer. Even top tier makers normally only offer three years now. So you can find yourself in the situation of having a perfectly good handset that does all you need, but is a walking security vulnerability because critical flaws have not been patched and likely won't ever be.

[Roger Mills]

I've done some experiments tonight, pairing it with BT headphones and making calls to voicemail. The incoming sound is intermittent - just like it is with ordinary calls, using the phone's speaker.

The phone's 'sound' is ok, in that I can play music either through the phone's speakers or through the BT headphones with no problem - so the problem seems to be associated with the Phone app rather than with the hardware.

I've tried doing a Force Stop on the phone app - after which it appears to work better - for voicemail at any rate. Does this provide any clues?

Can I use an alternative phone app, or am I stuck with the built-in app?

[Paul]

A phone call might involve echo suppression.

Whereas listening to music is straight playback.

On a PC, it is quite popular for poorly written applications to leave an echo suppressor running at all times, whether the application intended to use it, is running or not. This can result in funny sound effects or a "hollow" sound effect.

One way to defeat echo suppression effects, is to push the sound directly to headphones via a 1/8" jack. I doubt a phone would be so lucky. I wear headphones on Zoom calls and doctors conference software. This doesn't stop the DSP from doing the echo suppression, but then the microphone cannot hear any of the conversation coming from the other end. Thus the DSP gets no signal needing cancellation.

Phone calls can also use squelch, to reduce packet transmission and datarate required. You can get 2:1 speech compression with squelch, while 4:1 compression requires further tricks. I'm sure the modern phone is well ahead of these metrics (which is why calls can be almost unintelligible, like the spam calls I receive on VOIP).

Paul