Phone call sounds garbled and robotic

Often times signal strength is not the best indicating of connection quality. However I do want to ask a few questions to try and narrow this down with you. When the issue of garbled voices happen is their some sort of pattern to it? Is it in a specific location or when doing a specific task (I.e can you repeat the problem reliably)? If it is a specific location do you know of anyone else with T-mobile service that can test the area or maybe own another device that you can test calls with?

You mentioned restarting the phone was the only way to fix the issue but have you tried turning airplane mode on and off as a short term fix? It basically forces your phone to reconnect to the network like a restart does but takes less time. Just thought I let you know as a band-aid fix in the short term. Sorry for all the questions and I will do my best to help.

I know this thread is old, but I have this issue all the time and I'm on the verge of needed to move away from T Mobile.  I'm actually on a conference call right now (for the last 30 minutes) and it's happened 4x.  Audio pauses, then goes very deep and slow until it "catches up".  Is there a known issue and fix?

I have been having this issue as well. The phone will be stationed in one place and I will experience this.  I also could be holding the phone standing still and if I move my hand the call becomes distorted. I have a Note 9. It's extremely frustrating because I miss parts of a conversation 

I have a line which includes my husband and both of my parents.  They used to live about 2hrs away and recently moved about 20 minutes away.  Ever since they moved closer, any time we talk on the phone (whether they call my or I call them--on either of their phones), the first first seconds of every call has this loud garbled, static-like sound, and then it resolves on it's own.  My parents tell me that they never hear it on their end of the phone.  I have no idea why it's happening.

Hi - I had something very similar happen today and got it resolved, so I found this thread and thought I'd add my experience to it. 

I have a OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition which has always worked perfectly on TMobile since I got it in January.  This evening, I was trying to call a local business, and he kept saying "I'm sorry, but I can't understand you. You'll have to call us back."  And then he'd hang up.  It was odd, because I could understand him perfectly, and I had full signal strength and had turned off wi-fi so that I didn't have any potential issues with that as I sometimes do.

After calling him the 2nd time and him hanging up again, I tried calling my own work cell phone, which is on AT&T.  It rang and I answered it, and as I spoke, I understood what he was talking about. I sounded like a robot spitting out random crackling sounds. There was no way to understand a word I said.  I immediately restarted my phone, and that had NO EFFECT on the issue.

I wondered if something had happened to my microphone. I tested with my voice recorder app, and that was crystal clear. No crackling or distortion at all.

I live right down the street from the T-Mobile shop, so I popped in a few minutes later and asked one of the guys if he could help.  He tested with me and verified the issue, and then he did something to "reset" the actual phone application on the device. After he did this, it started working again.

All these posts are great and might help if you have a new phone, but for old android phone, it doesn't sound promising. After the last update to Andriod 10, our work phones start performing weirdly, like garbled, choppy, or robotic. This issue happened on Nokia 6, 7, Samsung, and  MI A. the only common is software and carrier, which is (T-mobile) — Trying to knock things down and see what caused this. We have replaced three phones and so far working well for the new phones. not sure if the data signal doesn't support the old phone after updating the software, or the software not fully compatible with the old phone 

I'm in your LTE extended area so I can't try 2G/3G

I’ve been having this issue for a month now and it happened again today when my wife called me at 6:10PM CST. Hanged up and called her back at 6:15 PM CST and she still couldn’t hear me but hear a robotic voice. Have to reboot my iPhone XR to make it work fine again, my wife has the same phone and on the same T-Mobile plan as me but no issues for her but my phone is having the problem. 

Any resolution or suggestions from T-Mobile support? 

I’ve experienced these same issues. It’s going on nearly three years for me. It’s very sporadic. I’ve been in the store and asked for help, but their advice didn’t resolve the problem. I then bought a new phone and am now experiencing the same issue with the new phone. Strangely, my partner who’s on the account hasn’t experienced any of these issues. I also don’t have issue when I call her. I only have issues when calling or receiving calls from everyone else, but infrequently. Maybe 1 out of 10 times...

My old phone was a Oneplus 6 and my new phone is a Google Pixle. I’ve have trouble with both, so I think it’s a T-Mobile issue. Given how they haven’t contacted me or replied to these posts, it makes me think they don’t care. I would switch providers, but it’s such a hassle and the price would go up.

I had a similar problem on my OnePlus 5 and it seem to happen on the receiving a call side through the ear speaker. I’m running the latest version of LineageOS, and turning the speaker phone on and off seemed to fix the problem for me, at least temporarily, Give it a try.

Hey all, 

In case anyone needs help figuring this out, I’m writing this to share a bit of research I recently found that may explain why this is experienced during phone calls: 

Bluetooth. 

Whenever we enable Bluetooth on our cell phones, we allow its frequencies to be transmitted and other frequencies to be received which will inevitably encounter a normal amount of interference. However, the you may experience a greater magnitude of interference depending on your cell phone’s proximity to other Bluetooth devices. These include Bluetooth connection to your vehicle (ie. CarPlay), wireless headphones (ie. AirPods), wireless speakers, wireless television, and essentially any device that you are able to access remotely from your cell phone. Additionally, if others around you are using Bluetooth connection to their own devices as well, then that too will increase interference. 

Although this is not a definite solution to the robot-static-distorted audio sound, this is a solution that has worked so far for me in preventing it during phone calls: Deactivate Bluetooth (temporarily) during important phone calls and when you are in public places to maximize quality of usage. Of course, re-enable it when desired. 

I currently use the iPhone 13 Pro Max, one of Apple’s most recent iPhone releases, and I have also been a longtime customer of T-Mobile. Therefore, I hold a lot of trust for these two big companies as I have never encountered this issue until recently. Since the modern era is seeing an increase in usage of wireless Bluetooth connection, and drastic changes in technology in general, it makes sense for this issue to increase in prevalence as well. 

Hopefully this helps. Feel free to take this with a grain of salt, since I am just a high school student. But just like most adults (and my parents), I think the younger generation has a very good aptitude for dealing with technology, sometimes to a fault (haha… pain). 

Best wishes!