How to Fix My Phone Bad Call Quality?

Bad Phone Call Quality? Here's How to Fix It

A single outstanding inbound or outbound call can foster a decade-long business relationship. But what if your interaction is interrupted by garbled audio or due to a weak network connection? It leaves a bad impression on customers, affecting your business deals.

 

A survey by IPSOS and EPOS found that 95% of workers lose focus and productivity due to constant audio issues, and 69% take longer to complete tasks because of sound problems. Delays, cut-offs, or any disturbance during ongoing calls lead to repetitive conversation and longer call times, which frustrates both callers and receivers.


Hence, businesses must improve phone call quality and ensure interruption-free customer interaction. And in this article, we’ll teach you how to do that.

Highlights:

  • Bad audio quality increases call handling time, impacting business and frustrating users and the company.
  • Call quality problems can be caused by network issues, hardware or software malfunctions, or environmental factors.
  • To improve call audio quality, ensure a stable connection, install the latest OS, update your device, and repair damaged hardware.
  • Using a router with QoS (Quality of Service) features prioritizes voice calls and critical traffic, ensuring consistent VoIP call quality.


What is Call Quality?

Call quality is the effectiveness and clarity of audio during a phone conversation. Factors such as a clear sound system, the professionalism of the speaker in addressing the issues, and overall caller experience determine the quality of the call.

A good call quality ensures a smooth flow of phone conversation with minimal distortion, noise, or interruption and clear audio on both ends. Bad call quality, on the other hand, includes unwanted sound interference, echo, delay in voice transmission, and garbled audio.

Common Call Quality Issues in Phone

Loss of audio data packet during transfer, background noises, call drops, delayed calls, robotic voice, or one-way audio are the common call quality issues faced during interactions.
 

List of common phone call quality issues.

  • Packet Loss: In VoIP calls, voice data is broken into packets and transmitted over the Internet. Lost packets cause gaps in audio quality.
  • Call Drop: Poor network connections can cause calls to end unexpectedly, disrupting conversation flow.
  • Delayed Audio: A delay between speaking and hearing creates distorted sound, making conversations feel awkward.
  • Background Noises: Construction work, large machines, and social gatherings create noise, making conversations unclear.
  • One-Way Audio: Network issues, weather conditions, or software problems may cause one person to hear the other without being able to respond.
  • Robotic Voice: Also known as jitter, robotic-sounding audio happens due to significant packet loss, making speech sound unnatural.

Reasons for Bad Phone Call Quality and Their Solutions

An unstable network connection, outdated apps or operating systems, or old devices might affect your call quality. Other issues, such as damaged speakers, microphones, broken devices, or location, can also be the reason for bad phone quality.

You can check the network connection, secure sufficient signal strength, update your device and software, avoid areas with poor internet coverage, and ensure consistent quality of calls.

1. Network Issues

A weak or unstable network impacts your ability to make and receive clear calls. When your internet is running slow, it might not be able to handle the call bandwidth demand, resulting in packet loss or poor audio. It disrupts the call connection, leading to call drops, garbled audio, and frustrating delays.

Solution:

You can solve network issues by moving to a location with better signals or increasing the network bandwidth for a stable connection. Sometimes, simply restarting the modem or router can resolve bad call quality.

2. Outdated or Damaged Device

Old, updated devices or damaged hardware, speakers, and microphones can cause call quality issues. Phones with Low Battery percentages sacrifice signal strength to conserve power for the most important functions.

Solution:

Updating your mobile phone or PC regularly and installing the latest OS helps to improve call quality. Fixing any damaged parts and cleaning the phone’s speaker or microphone provides crystal-clear audio during calls. Additionally, restarting your phone can automatically fix temporary call quality issues.

3. Environmental Factors

Calls are transferred using call towers, but obstacles like buildings or mountains block the signals. Humidity or rain can cause poor signal strength, degrading call quality. Moreover, noises, echoes, and disruptions affect voice clarity during the call.

Solution:

Relocating to an open area to obtain a clear data transmission signal, avoiding areas of low internet coverage such as basements, and postponing calls until the weather improves will ensure uninterrupted communication. Also, adjusting settings like noise cancellation improves voice clarity during calls.


Steps to Activate Noise Cancellation on Android:

  1. Open the Phone app.
  2. Tap the three-dot menu in the top right corner.
  3. Go to Settings > Accessibility.
  4. Search for Noise Cancellation or Noise Reduction and toggle it on.

Steps to Activate Noise Cancellation on iPhone:

  1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Audio & Visual.
  2. Turn on Phone Noise Cancellation.
Steps to Activate Noise Cancellation on iPhone

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4. Apps Issues

Call quality depends upon your device, OS version, and phone settings. Outdated apps with bugs and glitches cause call audio quality to degrade. Especially while using VoIP apps, it limits data usage in the background, affecting the call experience.

Solution:

Upgrading your device software and installing the latest OS and Caller apps fixes glitches and bugs, automatically solving call quality problems. Additionally, restricting background data usage helps you improve your phone call quality.
 

Steps to Restrict Background Data on Android:

  1. Go to Settings > Apps.
  2. Select the app you want to restrict.
  3. Tap Data Usage.
  4. Disable Background Data.

Steps to Restrict Background Data on iPhone:

  1. Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh.
  2. Toggle off Background App Refresh for all apps or turn it off for individual apps.
steps to restrict background data on iphone

Best Practices to Improve Your Phone Call Quality

Regularly updating devices, maintaining good network connection, and protecting your devices from physical damage help to improve call quality.

Regularly Update Your Software

Phone companies regularly update apps and software with fixes for glitches, bugs, and issues. Hence, updating your phone resolves issues like drop calls, echo, and choppy audio. It also includes security patches that protect your call from being intercepted.

Check the Internet Connection

Having a stable network connection prevents data loss and sound distortion and provides crystal-clear sound. If your network is too slow, consider increasing bandwidth or changing service providers to improve your connection.

Protect Your Phone from Damage

Physical damage to the phone can cause issues such as damaged speakers or microphones. Hence, protecting your phone helps improve call quality and prevents you from wasting your hard-earned money.

Use a Headset

Using a noise-canceling headset in a noisy environment helps you reduce background noise and maintain high-quality sound on the phone. You can use wired headphones for stable audio.

Implement Quality of Service (QoS) Setting

QoS (Quality of Service) manages data traffic on the network and controls factors like latency, jitter, and packet loss. It helps prevent congestion and prioritizes voice packets over the data, which improves call quality.

Conclusion

Call Quality is all about the clarity and reliability of audio during a phone call. A smooth call requires a stable internet connection and a quiet, disturbance-free environment. Changing your outdated device, having high-speed internet, or switching to VoIP phone calls can improve call quality.

 

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Frequently Asked Questions

How do I fix bad call quality?

Fixing Bad Call Quality includes a step-wise process:

  1. Finding the Problem: First, locate the problem for bad call quality, i.e., hardware damage, software problems, telecommunication problems, or even weather problems.
     
  2. Finding the Solution: Now, find the optimal solution to fix bad call quality, whether changing devices, updating software, moving from your environment, or waiting.
     
  3. Solving the Problem: After you decide on the solution, you implement it.
     
  4. Rechecking: After implementing your solution, you recheck whether the applied solution restores your phone call quality.

How can we improve call quality?

To Improve your sound quality during a call, you must regularly update your phone and apps and maintain a good network connection. Also, move away from obstructions and consider upgrading your mobile phone's apps and software.

How do I make my call sound clearer?

Using headsets, moving to a quiet location, upgrading your network connection, and using good VoIP codes with telephone service providers make your call sound clearer.

Does 5G improve call quality?

5G offers higher bandwidth and lower latency and is faster than previous networks, i.e., 1G, 2G, 3G, and 4G, which improves your phone call quality.


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