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There is a lot of discussion on the internet about the iPhone’s speaker volume. Quite a few people complain that it is too low. Others say that it isn’t loud but it is satisfactory. And still others are getting along just fine. Recently, I had started to notice that my iPhone’s speaker was just plain quiet. It seemed to happen over time, but I really started to notice this after upgrading to firmware 1.1.2.

Needless to say, I honed in on a few potential culprits. Perhaps it was the 1.1.2 firmware update. Or maybe, I had blown the speaker? Or perhaps the settings had gotten corrupted. I ended up resetting the settings on my iPhone (not a full restore) and trying out a self-proclaimed software fix for this issue that was available from Installer.app. But nothing worked and my iPhone’s speaker seemed to just be plain quiet. Before, it seemed only to be quiet during speakerphone conversations. Now, it seemed to be quiet while listening to the iPod or watching videos on YouTube. I convinced myself that it was all in my head, that the iPhone was probably always this quiet and decided to change my ringer to a higher pitched one so that I could hear it better (Marimba was being drowned out by just about all types of ambient noise).

While trying to diagnose the low speakerphone volume way back when, I had put my ear directly to the speaker grille and noticed that it was quite loud. If I put my hand over the speaker grille, I could muffle the sound. On a whim today, I tried to reproduce the results of this experiment and something odd happened. For one, the sound coming from the speaker was not as piercing as it was before. Secondly, putting my hand over the grille did not muffle the sound. In fact, it seemed not to have any effect on the sound volume at all. Perhaps the speaker had somehow come loose and gotten lodged behind another component in the iPhone and this was “pre-muffling” the sound so that my hand covering the grille would have no measurable effect? I shook the iPhone to try to hear the tell-tale signs of a loose plastic piece (presumably the clasp holding the speaker to the iPhone chassis). But I heard nothing.

That’s when I took out a bright lamp and looked at the iPhone’s speaker grille. I didn’t notice anything strange, but I thought maybe if I could push through the grill with a pushpin, I could feel if the speaker was loose somehow. That’s when I discovered what the problem was and that it was so simple that it should have been obvious. When I pushed the pushpin into the grille (gently) some debris fell out. I tried another hole in the grille and sure enough, more debris fell out. This debris, presumably lint and other cruft in my pocket, had gotten lodged in the grille and was muffling the sound.

I am happy to say that after cleaning out the speaker grille (and microphone grille too as it also had a buildup of cruft) with a pushpin, my iPhone speaker volume is back to normal. I no longer think I am deaf. I no longer think I am crazy and just mis-remembering. I no longer am stuck Googling for a problem and thinking that my iPhone has a freakishly low volume by design.

For those of you that are afflicted by low speaker volume, definitely check to see if your iPhone’s speaker and microphone grilles have a blockage. It is terribly difficult to see the blockage if one exists as it is quite a bit of a way into the grille. But if you gently push a pushpin into the grille (not too deep, look at the picture above) and you have a blockage, junk should start to fall out and your volume levels will hopefully be restored.