Low speaker volume on HTC Desire HD

I just recently got a severely annoying problem with my week-old HTC Desire HD. First things first; I love this machine. Then again, it's my first smartphone and my previous phone was a LG Shine following my Motorola Razr. So, regardless of the smartphone I bought I would take one huge step. Then again, I naturally tried a few ones out before settling. I was close to getting the cheaper Desire (without "HD") but when I got to the point of comparing the screens side-by-side, the choice was clear for me. Even though it's the same technology on paper on both screens, the Desire HD was just... crisp. Almost as crisp as iPhone 4. The ordinary Desire had this very visible "pixel grid" - the borders of the pixels were too visible for me.

HTC Desire HD

Anyway, the problem was that suddenly after a week's use the volume on the speaker went down, a lot. Games were hardly audible at all, music and most of all ringtones and notification sounds could only be heard if you were in a otherwise silent room. I tried all sorts of settings, but all volume sliders were at max. I tried various volume changing apps, but they all stated the same - the volume was at max.

So clueless, I went to The Phonehouse (Skövde) to ask for help. They looked at it, and even called HTC to see if there were more with the same problem. Some had complained about overall low volume; and yes, the speaker volume was kind of low (not at all as loud as for example iPhone 4) from the start but you could easily hear your ringtones and the like. They had no other solution than to have me send in the phone for checkups and possibly repairs. In the store they kind of concluded that it probably was a hardware issue, since sound was good with headphones plugged in but not when using the speakers.

However, as a "last resort" before sending it in, they asked if I could try factory resetting it. I thought that it couldn't hurt but I had no hopes of it actually working. But, to my surprise, it did work. So, the problem wasn't hardware based.

I installed all my usual apps again and everything went fine. I thought that maybe I had installed some app that I had forgotten about that somehow bugged out the volume for me before the reset. Then this morning after my walk to work it happened again. Ringtones low and music (through the speaker) was barely audible.

What the frak? So I retraced my steps. What had I done between my apartment and work? I had... surfed a little, checked twitter, and been listening to the FM Radio (using the built-in app). When I arrived at work, I disconnected my headphones, picked up my phone and did the usual stuff and that's when I realized the volume was out of whack.

Then it hit me; the built-in radio app has a power button. You can, for some reason, only click it (to exit the app) when the headphones are plugged in. When they're disconnected the app tells you to plug them back in as it uses them as an antenna. I didn't think much of it at first and just clicked "home" to "close" the radio but apparently the radio was still there, in the background... So, to try out my theory that maybe you HAVE to close the radio using its own power button, I plugged in my headphones and clicked the power button, and when the app was finally closed I disconnected my headphones again.

Built-in FM Radio app

Voila. All volume levels back to normal. The FM Radio app had altered the volume levels behind the scenes somehow and didn't change them back until it was closed the "proper" way.

So, a TLDR...

Problem:
Extremely low music, ringtone and notification volume on my HTC Desire HD's speaker.

My solution:
When using the built-in FM Radio app, use its own "power" button to close the radio BEFORE disconnecting my headphones.

EDIT: I tried to recreate the problem after I wrote this post. I instantly succeeded in recreating the problem, but not the above-mentioned solution. Instead, this time I fixed it by setting it to speaker mode before (press "menu" and then "speakers") closing the "FM Radio" app and disconnecting my headphones. I'm certain that this app is the problem (for me anyway). So for me, and I recommend this for anybody else with the same problem, get another app for playing FM Radio until this issue is fixed!

Do take a look in the comments section below for more tips if my solution didn't work for you!

I'm Sick

I'm sick. Have had several things going on lately. A headache that explodes whenever I do something slightly physically demanding and most of all when I do intimate things, simply put. Also, I have a cold and a fever, but on top of that I have a cough. A tickling dry sensation in my throat that gets worse by coughing. It doesn't hurt, it's just there, making me cough and cough. Especially, of course, during the night and when I lie down.

This night I had to go throw up just because I coughed so much. I didn't feel sick or anything, I just coughed so much my body probably thought there was something stuck in my throat. Fun. After that, it kept itching. I've even popped some pills; one especially that's supposed to affect the coughing center of the brain. It doesn't really work.

So, instead of laying in the bed I have to sit up and sleep. I've slept some 3 hours so far. It reminds me of when I had this a few years back. I coughed in my sleep so much that my throat cramped, and I couldn't breathe. Imagine waking up in the middle of the night, realizing you can't get any oxygen at all, then having to climb over a partner and down the bed ladder, and naked running through the student corridor onto the balcony where you try to cough and cough and cough but without getting any air for a minute (which felt like an eternity) all the while the body tries to evacuate whatever might be stuck in the throat. No fun.

Needless to say, I'm scared of sleeping when I am like this. Though, as it looks now it's impossible to sleep when I cough. Except when I sit up. For some reason it doesn't itch as much - but it does itch.

An interesting part of this is that my brain seems to want to explain what's going on in the most bizarre ways. Yesterday I had been at a friend's place watching him play Silent Hill 3. When I tried to sleep, my brain wanted to somehow connect my inability to sleep with me playing Silent Hill 3 where I was trying to find the best way out of a maze while being chased by pyramid head. It wasn't even a nightmare. I remember waking up a few times, and then the "final" time I shook my head and told myself "hey, come on, I'm awake - the whole Silent Hill thing is just bullshit, it's not real, what I should focus on is to sleep comfortably".

This night, it's the same thing. Whenever I try to sleep, trying to find some new position where I perhaps don't cough as much, my brain tries to connect that with something else.

Like, when I try to find a good position, I'm helping the characters in the series Lost to set up various perimiters and defenses in the jungle. When I finally shook that out of my head, it switched to trying to clean the backs of books. And then boxes. And letting different body parts sleep. And even though I'm fully aware that it's really stupid, my brain falls back onto it again and again. I just can't think to myself that "I'm now going to try to sleep" - the mission is much deeper than that.

I suppose it's the fever playing tricks on me, and maybe it's a nice way to put my mind on something else for a while.

I hope this'll pass soon. I can take an exploding headache and a fever and a running nose, but this itching throat... it's just too much.

Where I got all this from? I don't know, but one should remember that my partner was sick (he's working with teenagers...) and I have a job and I go to school. In school, I always try to sit as far up in the front as I can which means that any coughing and sneezing from the others in the classroom will hit me. Having the science of viruses and stuff in mind, I don't currently dress too lightly to affect my immune system (in contrary to popular superstition). I also know that when I dress more heavily it's more difficult to move and I lose my breath more easily leading to me breathing with my mouth (to "catch up") instead of my nose which more or less means no air filtering. Knowing that viruses usually enter through the nose and mouth, and knowing my own body heat make no difference in the virus' cold-induced increased capacity to pass my defenses, the way I dress really makes no difference. Spare me the theories that build upon the old and incorrect name "to catch a cold" please.

I'll try to sleep again. I wish I had some nice Nyponsoppa.