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Bluetooth phone volume low

55K views 42 replies 21 participants last post by  alinili 
#1 ·
Anyone else experiencing too-low phone volume (even when in-car volume is turned up to full)? Highly annoying. Phone worked perfectly on previous non-Volvo car and works on the better-half's car.
 
#4 ·
What about the volume on your phone while on a call? Is that turned down? If that doesn't work than try deleting the phone from the car and sync it again to see if that helps. If not you could always bring it back to the dealer to see if there is any updates for the Bluetooth or at least reload the latest firmware. I've never had an issue with with call volume on any of my phones on either of the Volvo's. I use an iPhone 6 Plus (no issues with my previous Nokia Lumia 920 either) and my wife uses a iPhone 5S & 6 with no issues either.
 
#11 ·
Didn't bother to post here over the summer and fall, but the problem persisted, intermittently. The volume of the other person is randomly too low to hold a conversation. They can hear you. Sometimes it's fine. Despite my old phone working perfectly in my prior car and my wife's car, I thought it might be the phone.

Had the audio software upgrade done about a month ago. No change. Got a new phone for Christmas (Android). No change--problem still there.

Any ideas? It is absurd. Fortunately I rarely talk while driving, but the few times I do is like a casino roll of the dice. Have no idea if I will have to call back or ask person to call me back to try to get it to transmit at a normal volume. About a 50/50 chance.
 
#13 ·
I have the same problem with a Sony Z3.
Unfortunately, I often have to take calls while I'm on the road...
 
#12 ·
Man, that sucks. I wish I had some ideas. I still have my same phone, HTC One(M7) and use Bluetooth regularly without issue. I've also been able to get Voice dialing to work consistently now as well.
 
#15 ·
The entries are so current. The problem persists for me as well. I am driving an XC60 2015.5 and have had this problem since the beginning. Yes, it is more like Russian Roulette. I had a software upgrade just 2 days ago wherein the service people told me they applied all current updates. I wish they were willing to tell me what they updated. I had brought my SUV in for some other reason, however. So, the problem continues.

This morning, right after a spoke to my wife while I was driving to work, I immediately placed a call to Volvo on Call (which communicates to the car differently) and complained about this, once again. Let's see how far this goes.

My wife did call me back after she talked to someone else on her phone from her car. She had no problem at her end. When she called me back, I was no longer in my car. I spoke to her over my iPhone 5 clear as a bell.

I will try deleting the phone and re-adding it as well as go through every possible car setting such as navigation volume to see if there is any improvement.
 
#17 ·
I have had similar issue with iPhone 6s on 2016 P*. Volume goes up and down with live voice. Pre-recorded messages always loud. Dealer reloaded software and so far, problem seems corrected; however, with so much snow in the area, the car has been sitting in the garage, so no real test. Someone suggested deleting phone and re-pairing. I think I will try that. Wife has a 2015.5 XC70. No problems in her car. She also has an iPhone 6.
 
#21 ·
Is all bluetooth audio very low or just some of it?
What Android version is your phone running? just so I can think of the interface and settings.
And just to make sure, you've gone through the more granular volume controls manually, not just using the volume up/down button from the side of the phone?
 
#23 ·
The issue is the volume raises and lowers (mostly lowers) by itself and it's the car that's doing it, not the phone. And it's intermittent (as others have also described above). The ringer sound will most often be fine/proper level, but then once the person picks up, the volume drops.
 
#25 ·
I'd reserve judgment for the cause. It's likely a combination of car and phone contributing to this.
I haven't used the phone connection as much as media playback in the car. I certainly haven't noticed the phone audio being lower than the media.
I'm using Android 7.1.1. Thinking back to earlier Android versions and other cars, I can tell you that similar issues exist. I have anecdotal stories of coworkers complaining about their Android phone and how their car doesn't get audio properly. Last example was a Nissan leaf and a Nexus device running 6.X. He tracked the issue down to the way android had their bluetooth stack set up. It might be worth simplifying the bluetooth signal from your phone from stereo to mono channel. There are apps like BT Mono that will help you do this.

I'd be curious if you see any improvement.
 
#26 ·
I'd reserve judgment for the cause. It's likely a combination of car and phone contributing to this.
I haven't used the phone connection as much as media playback in the car. I certainly haven't noticed the phone audio being lower than the media.
I'm using Android 7.1.1. Thinking back to earlier Android versions and other cars, I can tell you that similar issues exist. I have anecdotal stories of coworkers complaining about their Android phone and how their car doesn't get audio properly. Last example was a Nissan leaf and a Nexus device running 6.X. He tracked the issue down to the way android had their bluetooth stack set up. It might be worth simplifying the bluetooth signal from your phone from stereo to mono channel. There are apps like BT Mono that will help you do this.

I'd be curious if you see any improvement.
Thanks for the suggestion. No need whatsoever for stereo for phone calls! However, I use BT a lot with a home phone system (Panasonic, with of course none of these intermittent volume issues), so don't want to screw that up. I'll check it out though, assuming it's a simple app that can be uninstalled if it causes any problems.
 
#29 · (Edited)
Interesting... I like that feature for music, though! There should be a separate option for this related to phone versus media. I can test to see if it fixes the phone issues because I have always used this feature for media and radio. The car is far from quiet at higher speeds (wind, tire and road noise as much as exhaust and engine).
 
#32 ·
I'm having the same issue on a brand new 2017 S60 and iPhone 6S: the output volume on phone calls is too low, even with the phone volume and Sensus volume both turned up all the way. Additionally, the output volume of Volvo On Call is too low -- can barely hear the person speaking.

This problem did not occur on my 2012 S60, which I just traded in. Turning off volume compensation doesn't help.

Super annoying.
 
#34 ·
I've had this issue from day one with iPhone 4/5/6 in my 2014 XC60. It works well enough, I guess, but I have to have the volume up at max to hear it. (I usually have my TV volume at "8" out of 100, for comparison, so not hard of hearing.
 
#35 ·
I also have to run my BT phone volume at 100% with iPhone 6S, some calls are so low I have to hang-up. Seems to be to certains types of phone, calls to VoIP phones especially bad. BT media works great though, no probs there.
 
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