Speaker Volume is low?

[wprocks]

I just received my Lumia 640 XL RM-1096 from eBay. It was shipped straight from Singapore. Says manufactured in Vietnam. It's speaker volume for message tones seems low. Volume level of 3/4 on my 1520 used to be loud enough for me. This one needs at least 6/7 or out 10 to get correct message tones.

 

[Woodman1914]

It's low compared to Lumia 925 and 1520, this seems like a component that MS went a little too cheap with, the speaker itself is only about 8-9mm wide whereas the 1520's was about 3 times that.

WW

 

[wprocks]

Thank you for the reply. How in the world Microsoft it's going to compete with their own OEM HTC with these speakers?

 

[Woodman1914]

MS has front facing speakers in the Surface tablets, so maybe there's hope future phones from MS will have this. Or maybe not. We know it was not an arbitrary cost-cutting decision. One possible factor is the battery run-down tests that are so common in review sites. These sites usually include some type of looping video, but they do not standardize volume output across phones (eg. played so-and-so video at an average output of X decibels), so if the review site just set the volume to the phone's "medium" setting, which in Windows Phone would be volume 5 out of 10, it's to the manufacturer's advantage battery-wise to make the output relative low, making the battery last longer. It's interesting that many review sites have noted the 640/XL for its good battery life, but rarely if ever mention the relatively low speaker output. Just a theory

WW

 

[Woodman1914]

(duplicate post, not sure how that happened)