Only getting static input on the Librem 5 external microphone. It does vary with volume. Headphones with mic seem to record only silence. (Yes. I checked volume.) Anyone seen this? I haven’t been able to open phone yet to check for loose connections.
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Must be something loose. It started working better with a little static, then I moved the phone and it’s gone to all static again.
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Should have been my first stop. 
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I used to get this behavior from time to time – cables and connectors seemed to be very finicky. Of course, my external mic just stopped working altogether over a year ago after an update. I was hoping that Crimson would fix it.
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I had reinstalled pulseaudio right before it started working again, but I didn’t do anything else but move the phone and it broke again. False fix, glad I didn’t post. 
I have opened the phone, and the long coax from the BM818 to the bottom board has a very sharp bend at the battery. (First time I’ve taken the phone apart this far.) My electrical training thinks that’s highly suspect, but I haven’t verified it from a schematic yet.
Don’t see how this would affect the mic input from the schematic. Another false assumption.
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Further investigation isn’t looking like an easy fix. I think I’ll wait to see what support says. Being on Android again sucks.
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I have dropped this phone many times, so I took all the boards out, except the main board looking for any visible damage, but found nothing. Tried adjusting contact “springs” (not sure if there’s a better term), in case they’d been compacted too often. (Top and bottom boards only.)
For the past few weeks, people had complained about a lot of static, or not being able to hear me, so I tried resetting sounds back to defaults and uninstalling pavucontrol without any luck. I finally installed sound recorder to hear for my self. A lot of scratchy noise with no input, like turning a dirty potentiometer on an old amplifier. Sometimes the bottom mic would recognize sound, and other times not. pacmd shows both left and right mic at same level. There doesn’t seem to be input on top mic. I think headphone mic is working, but I thought it would show up in settings and not seeing it. I was still getting loss of mic with headphones, so I couldn’t use them as a workaround.
After putting phone back together, the static seems better, but still losing mic input. Seems that after restart mic input takes a while to get enabled. Hardware switch seems to work, and wiggling it doesn’t seem to cause any noise.
Looks like it’ll have to go in for repair. We’ll see what support says.
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You may need to temporarily adjust the position of the headphone jack with fixed pressure to ensure a reliable connection with the Librem 5.
Plugged in different headset. Saw mic input change in settings. Plugged back in previous. Saw change. Bottom mic not working now.
Bottom mic started working after phone warms up. I should say “working”; registering static.
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One final note, watched temp gauges in mobile settings app. All temps (CPU, GPU, & CPU) started at 38 degrees, and didn’t see any life on mic monitor until 50 degrees. Saw fast flickering of video when switching back to Animatch that I’d never seen before. Maybe I’m starting to cause issues? ???
I really want to blame the static on a grounding issue. I am interested in seeing final cause. Anyone had a repair done by Purism?
This forum makes a good place to document findings as I think of them, if anyone is wondering why I’m posting so much.
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Yes, I had an out-of-warranty repair on my Librem 14 during summer 2024 in order to install a brand-new CMOS and 3-cell battery.
I’m mostly weighing my options.
Did you get an up-front estimate?
Was the work done timely?
I’m interested in knowing what was the issue, but I also am wondering if I should buy another Librem 5 (or another Linux phone) to tide me over. Buying another Librem 5 would make me feel a lot more free to continue troubleshooting this on my own, but would also give me less motivation and might not get to root cause as good.
(I’m sure my wife would vote for my present use of my old Android instead of shelling out another $800.)
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Yes, I simply paid for the new 3-cell battery and screws myself through the Purism shop, only incurring shipping fees, duties and taxes from DHL. The work was done within two weeks. My Librem 14 was part of an early batch during 2021 without a CMOS battery, so installing one dealt with hardware clock issues.
I need to do some of the things on this site. PulseAudio/Troubleshooting - ArchWiki
Wish I had found it sooner. It’d be funny (/ a relief) if this didn’t turn out to be hardware.
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Reflashing Byzantium would be a quicker solution then, but I am confident it is a hardware issue because I also share similar symptoms on my Librem 5 USA.
I’m waiting to talk to support, before reflashing. I will need to reflash, if I have to send it for repair.
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Yeah I got my main board and usb board replaced
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You may be able to flash the uSD card and boot from the uSD card in order to test a vanilla environment. (As always, shut down the phone before removing or inserting cards of any type.)
An alternative approach (somewhat slow) is a three step process
- Use Jumpdrive to
ddthe existing entire contents of the eMMC drive to a backup image file on the host (which of course you should be doing periodically anyway, or something equivalent) - reflash the eMMC drive and test whether the problem still occurs / goes away
- Use Jumpdrive to
ddin order to restore the previously made image
In either case, you should probably assume that your phone is offline for the duration of the procedure and you would ideally use the kill switch to turn off the cellular modem before you start.
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No fixes found in the pulseaudio troubleshooting.
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