iPhone 4 loud speaker not working after fall

[jan386]

After a fall to the rear side, the loud speaker of my iPhone stopped working. The iPhone was not exposed to water and all sensors are white.

It is not completely silent, but produces strange noise which changes as I do different things with the phone. I have made a short recording thereof. You can download it here (0.5 MB): Download iPhone noise.mp3 from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way .

0:00 - 0:07 iPhone has display switched off, airplane mode activated and is set to maximum loudness. A music track is playing in the Music app.

0:07 - 0:09 After the activation of the display, most of the noise is gone for about a second.

0:09 - 0:11 The display is on.

0:11 - 0:14 I performed "Slide to unlock". The noise was lower for about two seconds after finishing the unlock.

0:14 - 0:17 Noise back at its original level.

0:17 - 0:24 I swipe the touchscreen randomly with my finger.

0:24 - 0:25 A second of lower noise.

0:25 - 0:27 I do nothing, display is on.

0:27 - 0:33 I switched the display off with the power button.

Please note that the recording is greatly amplified and the noises are actually very silent.


The earpiece works just fine during a phone call. I have also checked the headphone jack (it's OK -- can detect plugging headphones in and out and plays music with no problem), performed a reset and a restore without solving the problem. Then I took the phone apart and connected the speaker to an external source of sound and it works fine as well

Could you suggest a place to look for a missing part or another solution if you stumbled upon this problem before?

Thank you for your suggestions.

[alljin]

just reformat your iphone bro...................

[Wites OM Tesla]

Another customer what is with this forum?

[jan386]

To alljin: Thank you for your advice. I have already tried that. I restored from DFU and updated to the newest version, that, however, did not help.

To Wites: Since I reside in Czech Republic, I am a little bit too far to drive to Moldova and possibly become your customer. I am, however, willing to pay for a useful piece of advice from an expert, which you indeed are.

Back to my problem: I tried to connect the golden pads below the speaker assembly to my computer's Mic In and record a song being played. It it not as messy as from the speaker, but it is not clear at all. You can listen to it here (0.4 MB) Download iPhone play.mp3 from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way .

Most of the noise may have been filtered out by the computer's audio system. I am going to try and record the Dock Connector's output (pins 4 and 6 of the J3) with the Dock Flex cable disconnected. By this I will see if the flex cable is all right or not.

[meineke]

Originally Posted by Wites

Another customer what is with this forum?

Yep, looks like another one need reball.

[Wites OM Tesla]

Originally Posted by jan386

To alljin: Thank you for your advice. I have already tried that. I restored from DFU and updated to the newest version, that, however, did not help.

To Wites: Since I reside in Czech Republic, I am a little bit too far to drive to Moldova and possibly become your customer. I am, however, willing to pay for a useful piece of advice from an expert, which you indeed are.

Back to my problem: I tried to connect the golden pads below the speaker assembly to my computer's Mic In and record a song being played. It it not as messy as from the speaker, but it is not clear at all. You can listen to it here (0.4 MB) Download iPhone play.mp3 from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way .

Most of the noise may have been filtered out by the computer's audio system. I am going to try and record the Dock Connector's output (pins 4 and 6 of the J3) with the Dock Flex cable disconnected. By this I will see if the flex cable is all right or not.

Ok sorry.
Try press with finger dock connector see if music play.
So you chk speaker and it play music from pc right?

[jan386]

After I found out that the sound from the two golden pads was heavily distorted, I wanted to avoid the Dock Flex Cable, which was defective in several cases described on this forum (I have searched thoroughly through here and found several similar cases, but none exactly the same). I found out that pointing two needles at the two contacts of the J3 dock connector was awfully difficult (at least for me with no desktop magnifying lens). I, however, managed to record several samples of clean undistorted sound.

After I reconnected the flex cable back to the connector, I couldn't hear anything, not even the noise I used to hear before. I said some very impolite words, because I thought I shorted and burned out the speaker preamp during my attempts. I restarted the phone but that didn't help. As the last attempt, I disconnected the battery for a couple of minutes. After I reconnected it, switched the phone on and "Slided to unlock", I couldn't believe my ears, as I heard a loud "CLICK". The loudspeaker worked!

What actually happened? Well, I don't know for sure, but I think that during the recording from the Dock Connector I manipulated with the flex cable rather ruthlessly and accidentally reconnected the broken wires. That would mean that I am still going to replace this part in the near future, but at least for now, I have a fully-working phone.

Thank you for your interest.

By the way, your illustrated solutions are awesome and show your great insight. Keep them going. I am definitely going to use one of them to repair a phone whose WiFi doesn't work.