If you’ve got a recent Samsung smartphone and are struggling with poor sound when taking voice calls I feel your pain. I have a Samsung Note10+ and often really struggle to hear calls; we live in a bit of a signal black hole and at home-time, our quiet road is like the main highway with everyone rushing in for their dinner, Netflix, and tracksuit pants. I also have a very noisy and unprofessional cat who contributes loudly to my work calls. This all led to feeling somewhat desperate with the sound on calls when using the phone’s built-in speakers. I have previously resorted to having my phone on loudspeaker but found this still did not help when the signal was poor or when there was significant outside noise.
Here are a few methods to enhance the sound quality and volume of your Samsung Galaxy phone when taking a call, bearing in mind that it won’t help if you have a poor signal on your device. The first one may seem obvious, but I imagine many of us, myself included, have not thought to do this.
Tap the Settings app on your device and scroll down to the Sound and Vibration tab. Tap on this which brings up a selection of other options including a Volume selection which has a few different choices as mentioned above.
There is also the option of the Sound quality and effects tab. If you tap on this you can choose to enable Dolby Atmos for general use as well as the gaming mode.
Tapping on the Android equalizer will bring up quite a few choices to help improve the sound on your device. You can choose the sound according to the type of music you may be listening to or customize this for phone calls.
Below the equalizer option, there is also a tab called Adapt Sound that allows you to choose a pre-set sound based on age, our hearing changes as we get older, and it becomes more difficult to hear higher frequencies. There is also an option to try a hearing test. This is a fab free way of testing your hearing to maximize the customization of your device’s sound but also a free hearing test if you have any worries about your hearing, quicker than downloading an app!
Another simple method is keeping dust out of your phone’s speaker grills. You can use compressed air to do this or something as simple as sticky tape like you would use to remove lint (or cat hair) from your clothes. You could also use a small, soft brush such as a make-up or small paint brush. Another seemingly obvious thing to do is to check that your device’s cover is not blocking the sound coming out of your speakers; this isn’t something we would think to check when getting a smart, new cover for our phone, but not all case manufacturers factor this into their design as efficiently as you might hope.
