Vodafone V8 distorted aux output

[iAmDisappoint]

I recently bought a smart V8.. very impressed with most aspects of the phone, very good value for money.

Everything is great apart from one key feature... And it's one of the main reasons I was seeking out a phone with a large storage capacity to use it as my main media player and replace my ipod.

Unfortunately it's absolutely shocking in this department. 

If you put the aux output to full volume the music is completely distorted, like completely unlistenable.. you have to roll back the volume at least 3 notches before the distortion is removed, at which point it's way too quiet and i have to max out my car stereo.. I simply can't reach anywhere near the volume or quality of my ipod with the exact same media and file quality. 

On top of this there is a high level of background noise on this phone, a sort of electronic static noise.. and forget trying to charge the phone whilst listening; the background noise goes into overdrive.

For some unknown reason, gapless playback seems to be unachievable on this phone and instead in between each song I get that ##~## static background noise for a split second but amplified... And upon the end of an album or playlist I get it indefinitely.

Not only is the max volume output quiet, and that's comparative to my ipod classic, which is already waaaay quieter than my old iphones and my moto G as far as I can remember.

It's a massive shame as it would be my perfect phone if it weren't for these massive problems. Not sure how such a litany of issues got past testing.. either that or I have a faulty unit.. can someone please offer some advice.

[BandOfBrothers]

Hi @iAmDisappoint

After using quite a few phone's myself I tend to stick with my iPod Nano 7th Gen as its 100% designed as a music device so gives the best experience. 

Some mobile phones imo humble opinion are not and moxtly give an adequate experience.

Some phone's are better than others at handling music files and play output / track change. 

My Samsung Galaxy s8 gives an exemplary experience but sorry ive not owned your model so cannot give my experience with it. 

Do you store the music files on the internal storage or a Sd Card  ?

It wouldnt harm asking at your local Vodafone High street Store to look at it and if possible try out a working demo model.

To have the phone swapped out you have 30 days from ownership and after that initial 30 days its a repair. 

[hrym]

I'm actually quite impressed that you can use the aux output at all as there have been problems in the past and thought Android had disabled the function.

It's possible that the problem is a mismatch between the output level and your car's input sensitivity.  The only way you can test this is by trying other players - your domestic hifi if available, for instance.

The solution would be to use another method of connection - basically, Bluetooth.   If your car doesn't have this, look for an accessory unit that's either hard-wired or connects to the aux input.   Or you could replace the car's sound system, though that's a bit extreme.

[iAmDisappoint]

It's definitely the phone, same thing happens with headphones. Like I said I have the ipod the cross check it with.

my car has no bluetooth functionality and I don't care to spend another bunch of money to get to the same functionality I already have. My car stero is really good, it's sounded incredible with all my other devices and phones, this is the only thing I've ever had an issue with, like I said it's the quietest device I've ever had and loudest in terms of background noise and static interferance.

I think I was exaggerating the gapless playback and the noise between songs issue though, I think it was the app I was using rather than the phone itself. I've tried a bunch of different apps in the hopes it would fix some of the issues.

[iAmDisappoint]

I'd argue that it's manufacturing fault and is not fit for purpose so CAB says I get 6 months. Problem is I unlocked it as soon as I bought it so I'm not sure which right supersedes which.

What I really want is to as you say, test another of the same model to find out if it is in fact faulty or this is built in.

I took it to my local shop and the guy was useless, just told me my only option was to take it back... I plan on ringing the tech support line tomorrow to see if they can shed anymore light on it.

All my music is on 128gb sd card set as external storage, not formatted to the phone. I went out of my way to get a fast card at 100mbps so I can't see it being the cause of the issue however I'll test some out on the phone itself to see if it yeilds a different result.

This is the card

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SanDisk-128GB-Micro-SD-SDXC-MicroSD-TF-Class-10-128G-128-GB-Mobile-Ultra-1...

[hrym]

If the issue happens with headphones as well, a test in a shop should be easy - there are probably demo files on the device that you can play without having to try to load your own.

I can't see why the card would be an issue, but I assume you've tried copying a file to internal storage and playing from there?

Personally, I only buy SD cards from an unimpeachable source (on Amazon from Amazon, or a high street store) because there are so many fakes out there, many of them almost impossible to spot.

I'm glad to hear there's no issue with the car audio.  That's one possible issue eliminated.

[iAmDisappoint]

I tried playing from the phone's internal memory, yielded the same result. 

It doesn't matter what the filetype is. Mp3, m4a, they all distort. These are the same files i've been using on my ipod for years without issue, they're all pretty high quality, 320kbps hardly anything under 192

I'm using the EQ in the paid version of pulsar as a temporary solution. I can squeeze a bit more out of the phone with a tweaked EQ but I've still not managed to meet the volume of my ipod yet. It's funny because my golden rule was always to never eq the source because it would result in distortion at max volume, I'd always EQ the output.

Also it seems that the phone has a built in system EQ which isn't flat. Tried flattening it and maxing out and it didn't fix the distortion.

[TJ]

@iAmDisappoint Sorry to hear that you're not happy with the sound quality on your V8. The only thing I can advise is if you take it into store, we can send it to our repair centre, to check if there's a hardware/software issue that's affecting the aux quality.

[iAmDisappoint]

Still no fix for this software issue, disappointed.

Will get huawei p smart next time. Forced to move on as you made no successor to this phone anyway.

Would love to buy a new version of this phone with the issues corrected.

[hrym]

As I observed before, a lot of Android devices won't play through the headphone socket to an aux input (only headphones).   This appears to be an Android security feature as the headphone socket is two-way.   You may therefore find that any other device won't connect in this way at all (and, as I also said before, I'm surprised this one does).  The volume mismatch is almost certainly down to a sensitivity incompatibility between the phone and the car stereo.   There's nothing you can do about that and I doubt that a software update would change it either.

I honestly think you might be best off looking for a Bluetooth connection option.  That should solve the present issue and, in all probability, make connection possible on any replacement device.