Thursday, August 10, 2017

Moto G4 Play // No Sound after Drop

I've have a Moto G4 Play for about two months and after a pocket-level drop onto pavement, the speaker-sound stopped working entirely. The microphone still worked, as did the audio port and (presumably) Bluetooth, but neither calls nor speakerphone/music produced any audio. *Will post video soon* I was just about to start the RMA/Warranty service process (after looking through the recommended solutions on this lenovo thread and seeing the factory reset / cache clearing fail to resolve the issue for pretty much anyone), but thought I'd take the back plate off and have a look at the little speaker module area and see if anything jumped out at me. I unplugged the battery and removed the micro-sd card. I didn't take the sim card out. Then I put them back in and pressed my finger pretty hard around the speaker area (around the camera) a few times. Nothing 'clicked' or anything, so I turned the phone back on and continued browsing the web. A few minutes later, I heard a notification sound. Yay! I started some music and kept pressing various locations near the speaker on the back of the phone and could cause the speaker to stop working intermittently depending on the pressure of my finger and the location it pressed. I'm concluding that (in my situation, at least) the drop caused[/exacerbated] an issue with the wiring in that area and caused a wire break or slight connection gap, which for now has been rectified. With the back plate gently put back on, the sound is still working correctly for now. I won't be surprised if the problem comes back occasionally with any trauma to the phone, whether I sit on it or drop it or my kid is too rough with it...but at least I'll know how to attempt to fix it myself. I hope this helps someone!

2 comments:

Arjun_Khurana said...

Is the phone still giving the same problem? Mine started same way as yours a d has worsened now to zero sound on speaker.

Nick Chapman said...

@Arjun_Khurana As the video I never posted shows...mine is working now. I had to firmly press around the speaker area with the back plate removed, then gently replace the back plate and i'm all set,now. I haven't had a substantial drop since, nor tested any further in case my fooling around breaks my phone's sound.

Hopefully you can take the back off your phone and have the same results as I did!