W10M exposes broken microphones on Lumia 930

[Christian Holzer]

Like many other Lumia 930 owners I've been annoyed by the microphone "bug" that Windows 10 Mobile suffered from in every build I tested - which forced me to revert back to WP8.1 time and time again.

However as it turns out, it's not a software bug in Windows 10 Mobile nor the Firmware - it's a hardware defect of the 930 (that Microsoft knows about) that surfaces once you upgrade from WP8.1 to Windows 10 Mobile.

Once Windows 10 Mobile goes live on the 930 we will have a lot more users who face this "missing audio" problem on their phones. So I'd like to use this topic here to explain why it happens, how you can identify which of your microphones are dead and what you can do about it.

The Issue:
My Lumia 930 running WP8.1 before repairs:
- audiorecorder -> works
- put a call on speaker -> works
- audio in recorded videos -> works
- voice commands (call a contact) -> works

My Lumia 930 running W10M 10586.107 & FW 02540.00019.15234.50006 before repairs:
- audiorecorder -> no audio
- put a call on speaker -> no one can hear me
- audio in recorded videos -> no audio
- Cortana -> works

When I downgrade back to WP8.1 using the WindowsDeviceRecoveryTool, then the phone worked as I described in "My Lumia 930 running WP8.1 before repairs". That is what made this issue so confusing - it looked like a software bug in W10M.

My Lumia 930 with LumiaPhoneTestAppliaction & FW 02540.00019.15234.50006 before repairs:
- Primary Microphone-> works
- Microphone 2 -> works
- Microphone 3 -> no audio
- Microphone 4 -> no audio

Windows 10 Mobile exposes Hardware Defect
Matthew van Eerde (Software Development Engineer -Windows Sound team) explained on reddit that the 930 is suffering from a known Hardware Problem which causes that one or multiple of it's 4 microphones fail.
Depending on which microphones fail the user can have a different experience once he upgrades to Windows 10 Mobile. It can happen that the user looses audio in some apps after the upgrade to W10M - like it happened to me. The reason for this can be found in the way how W10M uses/mixes the microphones - because that changed compared to WP8.1

How can I test my microphones?
With the "LumiaPhoneTestApplication" it's very easy to find out if one of your Lumia 930's microphones is dead.

http://download-fds.webapps.microsoft.com/supportFiles/phones/files/recovery/LumiaPhoneTestApplicationInstaller.exe

1. start the "LumiaPhoneTestApplication" and connect your 930 to your PC
2. select the microphone test
3. the Lumia 930 now boots into the test mode - don't worry, non of your data will be deleted!
4. non you can test all 4 microphones individually.
5. during the test the phone will record audio for 5 seconds from the mic that you selected. After that it will play that recording through the phones speaker.
   If one of these recordings does not have any sound, then the microphone used in the test is broken!

Service / Repair:
You can either contact the shop where you bought the phone or you can contact Microsoft directly.

For that you visit https://devicesupport.microsoft.com and register the device which will then give you the warranty status of the device.
Then you create a support ticket and send it to the address that the system tells you.

I got my 930 repaired in a week - Mic 3 & 4 were replaced - now my 930 works fine with Windows 10 Mobile.

 

[wizaard]

Many thanks for explanation! My phone was already in for repair but they didn't fix it. As soon as I have time I will send it again with report from the app.

 

[Chomiq]

Finally we got some official confirmation about the issue from MS.

 

[Mark Seychell]

Cant seem to register. Seems my country variant is China, but they only give me the option to register an XBOX or a Surface...

 

[Kieran Coghlan]

Thanks Christian. I happen to have two Lumia 929 (US version of the 930) phones. One is my daily driver which has 8.1 denim installed on it and is reliable. The other is my test phone on which I try out Windows 10 builds. It normally doesn't have a sim card in it (as I keep that in my denim phone) so I had not noticed if/when this mic problem cropped up. However, I had used that phone as my main phone with 8.1/denim before getting the second phone on ebay. So the mic did work at some point, in win8. Or Win8 was properly implementing the designed-in redundancy and using the other 3 mics in the absence of the primary mic.

Recently on the latest build of win10 combined with the latest version of Airwatch, I was able to sync my work email/calendar on Win10. This was the thing keeping me from using win10 on my daily phone. So I put the sim card in the win10 phone and discovered the mic problem during calls.

I ran the test software you provided (thanks!) and my win10 phone failed - the primary mic does not work. All three other mics worked fine though. But the primary mic played back just very loud static. Interestingly after a soft reset, the mic sometimes works but only for a few minutes.

I'll never know if the primary mic on this phone was always faulty or not. The phone worked in Win8.1/denim just fine, but as I mentioned it may have just been using software to compensate for the missing primary mic with the use of the other three mics. A co-worker of mine is a former Nokia engineer and in fact worked on all the Lumia phones on the (US) market except for the 950's. He was the FEA analyst (simulating drops and stresses on the physical phone) so not the designer, but worked with the design team. He says that the intention of four mics was to have redundancy as only two are really needed at a minimum for noise cancellation algorithms to work. So it sounds like this is not a pre-existing hardware flaw in the 929/930, but rather a flaw in the way Win10 uses the four mics (i.e. it doesn't use the other three as backup in the case of a single mic failure).

My other 929, my daily phone running win8.1/denim, passed the mic test with no problems. I intend to install this build of win10 on that phone and see if it still works. I'll report back. I'll also try to roll back my test phone (the one with the faulty primary mic) and see if it functions under win8.1/denim with only three functional mics. This may take me a while, as I don't have much time to tinker these days. But I'll report back when I find something.

Thanks again for the test software. Both my phones are out of warranty with Microsoft. I have one of them on an Assurion plan through Verizon though, but that's the "good" phone so can't use it to replace the broken one.

 

[johnpattison]

I've got the same problem in Australia. Telstra phone from Australia but only have Xbox, Surface or Band on the registration page...

 

[Kieran Coghlan]

UPDATE: I went ahead and installed the Insider-slow winmo10 on my Lumia 929 (the one with all four mic's operational) and it's working fine so far. Haven't tried rolling back the "test" phone to winmo8.1/denim yet.

 

[Christian Holzer]

I ran the test software you provided (thanks!) and my win10 phone failed - the primary mic does not work. All three other mics worked fine though. But the primary mic played back just very loud static. Interestingly after a soft reset, the mic sometimes works but only for a few minutes.

A hardware error of the prim. mic is very likely then.

He says that the intention of four mics was to have redundancy as only two are really needed at a minimum for noise cancellation algorithms to work.

I think that the apps use these mics for different things depending on what you do. i.e. the 930 was advertised to support 5.1 Dolby Digital when recording videos, the camera app will probably use the additional mics for that, while in other apps they might be used to noise cancellation.

Thanks again for the test software. Both my phones are out of warranty with Microsoft. I have one of them on an Assurion plan through Verizon though, but that's the "good" phone so can't use it to replace the broken one.

Yeah its extremely helpful! Without that tool I would never even have guessed that I am suffering from defective mics!

Found it by accident through google.

 

[deepak12345]

Originally posted by Christian Holzer
Like many other Lumia 930 owners I've been annoyed by the microphone "bug" that Windows 10 Mobile suffered from in every build I tested - which forced me to revert back to WP8.1 time and time again.

However as it turns out, it's not a software bug in Windows 10 Mobile nor the Firmware - it's a hardware defect of the 930 (that Microsoft knows about) that surfaces once you upgrade from WP8.1 to Windows 10 Mobile.

Once Windows 10 Mobile goes live on the 930 we will have a lot more users who face this "missing audio" problem on their phones. So I'd like to use this topic here to explain why it happens, how you can identify which of your microphones are dead and what you can do about it.

The Issue:
My Lumia 930 running WP8.1 before repairs:
- audiorecorder -> works
- put a call on speaker -> works
- audio in recorded videos -> works
- voice commands (call a contact) -> works

My Lumia 930 running W10M 10586.107 & FW 02540.00019.15234.50006 before repairs:
- audiorecorder -> no audio
- put a call on speaker -> no one can hear me
- audio in recorded videos -> no audio
- Cortana -> works

When I downgrade back to WP8.1 using the WindowsDeviceRecoveryTool, then the phone worked as I described in "My Lumia 930 running WP8.1 before repairs". That is what made this issue so confusing - it looked like a software bug in W10M.

My Lumia 930 with LumiaPhoneTestAppliaction & FW 02540.00019.15234.50006 before repairs:
- Primary Microphone-> works
- Microphone 2 -> works
- Microphone 3 -> no audio
- Microphone 4 -> no audio

Windows 10 Mobile exposes Hardware Defect
Matthew van Eerde (Software Development Engineer -Windows Sound team) explained on reddit that the 930 is suffering from a known Hardware Problem which causes that one or multiple of it's 4 microphones fail.
Depending on which microphones fail the user can have a different experience once he upgrades to Windows 10 Mobile. It can happen that the user looses audio in some apps after the upgrade to W10M - like it happened to me. The reason for this can be found in the way how W10M uses/mixes the microphones - because that changed compared to WP8.1

How can I test my microphones?
With the "LumiaPhoneTestApplication" it's very easy to find out if one of your Lumia 930's microphones is dead.

http://download-fds.webapps.microso...covery/LumiaPhoneTestApplicationInstaller.exe

1. start the "LumiaPhoneTestApplication" and connect your 930 to your PC
2. select the microphone test
3. the Lumia 930 now boots into the test mode - don't worry, non of your data will be deleted!
4. non you can test all 4 microphones individually.
5. during the test the phone will record audio for 5 seconds from the mic that you selected. After that it will play that recording through the phones speaker.
If one of these recordings does not have any sound, then the microphone used in the test is broken!

Service / Repair:
You can either contact the shop where you bought the phone or you can contact Microsoft directly.

For that you visit https://devicesupport.microsoft.com and register the device which will then give you the warranty status of the device.
Then you create a support ticket and send it to the address that the system tells you.

I got my 930 repaired in a week - Mic 3 & 4 were replaced - now my 930 works fine with Windows 10 Mobile.

1month since my mics were repaired. But ive heard it fails again unless and until the mother board is replaced and that worries me i just have 3 more months of warranty.

 

[Kieran Coghlan]

Yes, the mics are used for all sorts of things, but for the primary purpose (i.e. phone use) my friend's memory (keep in mind he wasn't the designer, just FEA) was that Winmo8.1 would compensate to maintain performance in the absence of one or more of the four mics.

He also didn't think there was a defect in the mic, but rather that it could have got loose if dropped hard or one too many times. He also heard of problems with the mic that were sometimes solved by blowing them out with compressed air, though do this at your own risk.

 

[Christian Holzer]

He also heard of problems with the mic that were sometimes solved by blowing them out with compressed air, though do this at your own risk.

That is very risky - usually that's how you can kill a mic or speaker very easily.

I made the same post in a german forum - so far 2 other people who suffered from the same problem have sent their phones to service and all got the mics replaced - now they work just fine with W10M.

Ursache & L?sung des Lumia 930 Mikrofonproblems unter Windows 10 Mobile - Seite 2

 

[Blake Seaman]

I bought my 930 used and from an individual, and have had issues with mics from the start. This is an upsetting issue...

 

[Christian Holzer]

I bought my 930 used and from an individual, and have had issues with mics from the start. This is an upsetting issue...

It is sadly an extremely common issue. In the german forum where i posted the same topic there is a guy who tested all the 930's from his family which still run WP8.1
Of these 5 930's, 3 have defective Mic's 3&4. And only 1 is still in warranty - Microsoft should really extend the warranty for that specific failure as it is a known problem either caused by bad components or design flaw.

 

[Dantunano]

Thank you! Your tutorial is really helpful.

Is there any reference value for the test? I mean, (sorry for my English), my L930 records at an acceptable audio volume on mic1 & mic2, but the other 2 are almost inaudible (but they do work, you can yell and listen back). Are they supposed to be only "noise canceling, secondary mics"?

 

[monedetoune]

problems also occur on stock 8.1.

 

[danielgr]

For those of us early adopters (which cannot use the warranty), it'd be nice if Microsoft made it work with W10.
Basically, we have two functional microphones (bottom front and rear), so there should be a way of keep recording audio in any circumstance, as it happens de facto with WP8.1.
Having spent my day researching on this matter, it seems that this is a terribly widespread issue with the 930, of which most users are not aware simply because the software in WP8.1 makes up for the HW failure. If Microsoft doesn't implement a similar workaround for W10, we may have a flood of complaints from all those flagship customers.

Obviously, if MS decided to offer us free repairs or brand new 950's in exchange I personally wouldn't mind.
The situation as it is now though, it is extremely frustrating, but I just keep crossing my fingers so that by the time they open the non-insider floodgates they've come up with at least a software fix.

 

[gricardo]

So what are the options for us? Just try to replace the mic and wait it to fail again until you can't use warranty anymore?
That's very low for Nokia/Microsoft, since this is a design flaw, the replacement should be free for anyone that faces it regardless of warranty.
I bought my phone in UK, but I don't live in Europe anymore, so I can't use my warranty even though it only ends in September/2016.

 

[Christian Holzer]

So what are the options for us? Just try to replace the mic and wait it to fail again until you can't use warranty anymore?

I would hope that the replacement mics that they use are a never revision which does not have the problem the failing ones has.

That's very low for Nokia/Microsoft, since this is a design flaw, the replacement should be free for anyone that faces it regardless of warranty.

Usually companies extend the warranty for such specific issues - if that's the case for MS... I don't know. Someone could find out who sends them a broken phone that is outside warranty and see if they charge for the repairs or not.

 

[Christian Holzer]

but the other 2 are almost inaudible (but they do work, you can yell and listen back).

You mean with the Lumia Phone Test Application you can barely hear anything from Mic3&4?
Then they are defective.

I placed my 930 infront of a speaker where I played the same song for every test.
All mics showed the same loudness in the recording. Mic3&4 were slightly less loud than Mic1&4 but thats because of where they are located on the phone.

If you have to use a really loud sound source to barely hear something on Mic3&4 then they are broken.

 

[b1kamikaze]

This is just great. Since my 920 isn't getting Win10 I decided to buy a 930 even though my 920 is working perfectly. Found one in great condition, updated it to Windows 10 and surprise surprise... mics 3&4 don't work so no speaker functionality, no audio on video recordings and so on. Really hope Microsoft will issue a firmware/OS update to support this although they probably don't have any incentive to do this.