Iphone 4 - Unfixable???

tmcl8

I purchased a iphone 4 on contract from vodafone in September 2010. I had no issues with it until November 2011 at which time i discovered that while being able to make and recieve calls that nobody could hear me (All other parts of the phone work perfectly (internet, messages, games, camera ect). I immediatly thought it was my microphone however i could use the voice recorder on the phone without issue.
I sent the phone into Vodafone to get tested and fixed and they said they could not fix it. The commented that it was not the logic board or the microphones (apparently their are two). I then tried three other phone repair outlets and I recieved the same responce that it was unfixable. I contacted apple but thier responce was that the phone was out of it one year warrenty and that I could spend 160 euro to send it to them to have a look but their would be no guarentee that they could fix it either.
The phone was well looked after, lived in a portective case, was not dropped or Jailbroken.
I feel pretty hard done by considering that not only is the phone broke from no fault of my own but now it is unfixable. I dont have the heart to throw a 32gb iphone 4 in the bin just yet.
If anybody has had similar experiences/ problems I would love to hear from them.
All and any advice welcome, cheers folks!

Boxfresh

If you really are thinking of throwing it in the bin, I'll buy it off you.

Giblet

Have you tried restoring the factory settings and firmware?

Jev/N

I have the same problem but luckily (kind of) I had extended my AppleCare warranty for an additional year. I'm currently in the process of fixing the issue as it is not a hardware issue as some Googling and testing helped me to figure out.

When I contacted Apple originally, they advised the first step was to restore iPhone "as new" and see if it still displayed the same problems, if it did it was a hardware issue and I could send it back for repair/replacement. If there was no problem with the "new" restore, then it was a software glitch contained somewhere on the phone when it had all details. Also, when you send a phone for repair/replacement to Apple, they will test the phone as new, without your details, and if they can't recreate the issue, then they'll just return it - this may be what happened with yours with VF?

I used the backup on iTunes to bring it back to the way it was before and it worked fine for a week or so but, low and behold, the problem did come back after that. It seems there is some file on the phone that is stopping voice going out on the Call App, whether via Mic, Headset or Speaker.

By the way, the issue on my phone was found to be obviously a software glitch in that I could call on Viber or Skype when no normal Call was working, and also the Voice Memo functioned fine.

Unfortunately the only way to go about sorting it is to Set up iPhone as New. All your Apps can be redownloaded from the App Store but they will be missing the settings, game saves or whatever you had before. I'm in the process of extracting my texts from the last backup (a convoluted process) and putting them on the new setup so as not to add any corrupt files from the previous backup

tmcl8

Thanks for all the advice guys. Tried to restore as new but did not work. Going to ship it to apple and they said (after alot of argueing that they would replace it for 160 euro).

Thaks for you help, espically Jev/N

whiterebel

tmcl8 wrote: »

Thanks for all the advice guys. Tried to restore as new but did not work. Going to ship it to apple and they said (after alot of argueing that they would replace it for 160 euro).

Thaks for you help, espically Jev/N

€600 phone? I'd be bringing it to the Small claims court.......

Jev/N

You're welcome. Apologies, I should have updated the info sooner.

While the above was true in my case, the past few restores and deleting of apps did not seem to resolve the problem as I and Apple thought they would, so on a final restore, the mic would no longer work at all. In the end, it seems that it is actually a hardware issue, even though the restores did temporarily work to resolve the problem.

The phone is currently on the way back to Apple to be repaired/replaced although I did pay purchase the extended AppleCare for €75 so it's not all free. Hopefully you get a good result.