Jolla Phone 2026 - 2G calls are incomprehensible to other side

Bug Reports
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1

REPRODUCIBILITY: often
OS VERSION: 5.2.0.16
HARDWARE: Jolla Phone 2026
UI LANGUAGE: any
REGRESSION: unknown (compared to other Sailfish devices: yes)

DESCRIPTION:

When you make a call via 2G, your voice is often incomprehensible to the other side. Descriptions like sounding “underwater”, “in a bunker”, “in a tin can” are made.

PRECONDITIONS:

Have a provider that doesn’t support VoLTE and live in a country where 3G is shut down.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:

  1. Call someone.

EXPECTED RESULT:

Both parties can hear each other reasonably clearly.

ACTUAL RESULT:

You can hear the other party, but they can’t understand what you’re saying at all.

MODIFICATIONS:

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

It seems like this doesn’t always happen, and it only seems to happen on outgoing calls.
It might not be relevant, but in my case, the two people I experienced this with happened to share the same provider as me - one person uses an iPhone, for which my provider does support VoLTE. The other person uses an Android phone, for which my provider doesn’t support VoLTE. Both of these people called me back, and we were able to understand each other perfectly on that second attempt.
I also called a different person with a different provider, who was able to understand me without having to call back.

7 Likes
2

I have a similar/related problem, in my case this happens especially during incoming calls, at first, both sides understand each other clearly, then i am heared, but not understandable (“underwater” / “from a tin can”, as you describe it), whike i can hear the other side still very clear. After some time, it works again

3 Likes
3

I observed the same problem in two outgoing 2G calls so far. At least one of these calls was to another telephone network.

2 Likes
4

I have a non-original wallet case for JP2026. The outgoing sound was as “robotic”. I checked the small holes next to the microphones on the top and bottom of the phone. They were covered by a case. I made holes in the case above these small holes. I made one test call with a participant who previously heard my voice as “robotic”, this time the sound was clear even after a longer call. I don’t know for sure if this was the cause of the broken outgoing sound, I’ll keep an eye on it.

1 Like
5

Some more data points:

Today, I had WLAN, mobile data and Bluetooth enabled, and the data connection was active on 4G (my plan doesn’t include 5G).

  • First, I called someone and the sound was perfect.
  • Immediately after ending the call, I called someone else, and they said the connection was very bad.
  • I ended the call, and right after ending it I noticed the connection indicator was on 4G. I didn’t see a 2G indicator, but maybe the reconnection to 4G just happened extremely fast. (And my provider doesn’t support VoLTE yet anyway.)
  • I waited about 5-10 seconds, then called the second person again. This time the sound was perfect. After ending the call, I noticed the connection indicator said 2.5G for a few moments before switching back to 4G.

It could be completely unrelated, but I’ll keep an eye on those connection indicators after (and maybe during) phone calls. If collecting logs would help, I’ll definitely do so.

1 Like
6

This happened again today, the network indicator showed 4G during the 2G call with audio issues.

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7

Can confirm bad audio quality on 2 G. I switched to 4G and activated 4-G telephony (VoLTE). Sound was good after switch. However not every call with 2 G shared the same problem.

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8

I’ve been using the phone in 2G-only mode for about three weeks. So far, there were no malfunctions with either incoming or outgoing calls.

After setting the 2G mode in the settings I rebooted the phone for a clean state.

1 Like
9

Sounds like you’re onto something, and it matches with my experience of the 4G icon being displayed during a 2G call. It’s like the phone is trying to use 4G data and 2G calls at the same time.

10

How can you tell that this is true?

That’s not a thing.

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Please read what it says and not what you think I’m saying.

12

You say the indicator is misreading - how are you telling that?

13

If as you wrote your operator does not support VoLTE, then every call will fastly switch from 4G to 2.5G during the call and switch back to 4G after it, there shouldnt be any other way. Try calling with earphones so you witness it all on the screen.

1 Like
14

Same problem here. Without the option for “4G Calling (VoLTE)”, the phone cannot be properly used for its primary purpose: making phone calls. The other person cannot understand me during any call.

Is there any chance this could be fixed by @Jolla in the next release?

1 Like
15

Jolla mentioned in the community meeting just now that they’ve been able to reproduce the issue, it isn’t fixed yet though. Apparently it may have something to do with background audio, so not necessarily related to network reception.

5 Likes
16

I don’t think it is a background audio / noise cancellation issue. Why does it work with VoLTE from the exact same location? The audio path should be the same. But at least it is reproducable and a correctable software problem.

If the problem really is related to background noise processing, @jolla should add an option to disable this feature. I’d rather have some background noise than have the other person unable to understand me at all.

17

Pretty sure the data that is transferred via 2G is much less than over 4G so that codecs/algorithms can bring a different result about the background noise.
They could offer an option that you can handle manually the background-noise-cancelling or they develop a real solution for that problem. Pretty sure second option will take one or two bigger updates than option one, but I prefer the “solve-the-issue-solution”.

18

Sure, I’d also prefer addressing the root cause rather than relying on a workaround. However, this issue is too urgent to wait months for a proper fix. So, in the meantime, an easy-to-implement workaround would definitely be welcome.

19

Where do you live that you have 2G-calls often enough to be really disturbed by that topic? I use the J2 since early August and never(!) had the described problem cause even in germany you have a high availability of 4G.

1 Like
20

Every Xperia X device adaptation has ‘too urgent to wait’ bugs that have been waiting for a fix ever since the first release, I wouldn’t hold my breath on a fix making its way into 5.2.

Literally anywhere if your provider doesn’t support VoLTE, as the first post in this topic mentioned.

1 Like