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Iphone Apple Hardware

iPhone 7 Plus Makes Hissing Sound Under Load, Some Users Complain (businessinsider.com) 196

Posted by msmash from the phone-on-steroid dept.
Several commendable users are complaining that their iPhone 7 Plus handsets are making a "hissing" noise especially when they do some heavy weight work. Some users note that this issue extends to the iPhone 7 as well. BusinessInsider reports:Stephen Hackett, cofounder of podcast network Relay FM, tweeted that his iPhone 7 Plus "makes terrible noises when under load," and shared an audio clip of the noise. TechCrunch writer (and former Apple employee) Darrell Etherington responded that his "brand new, just-unboxed [device is] doing the same thing right now." It sounds like the problem isn't affecting all devices, and it's not immediately clear what's behind it. Hackett said on Twitter that Apple will be replacing his device with a new one, which suggests it's a defect rather than just an unexpected quirk of the new smartphone's design. There's some speculation out there as to what's causing it - but nothing concrete yet. Engadget's Jon Fingas suggests it could be "coil whine," a process where electronics make an unintended noise while working, for example.
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iPhone 7 Plus Makes Hissing Sound Under Load, Some Users Complain More

iPhone 7 Plus Makes Hissing Sound Under Load, Some Users Complain

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  • The Holy Ghost of Steve Jobs Says (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "You're listening to it wrong."

  • Don't buy the first batches... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Monday September 19, 2016 @02:52PM (#52918505)
    I always wait a couple of months before purchasing a new device, especially in the smartphones department.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AK Marc ( 707885 )
      It's not like you'll be stuck with an exploding phone, right?
      • Yeah but seriously, given the price of these devices, I don't want them to make a strange sound, which must be annoying especially during a talk over the phone.

  • bad inductor selection (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19, 2016 @02:52PM (#52918507)

    I would guess they chose an inductor too small and it is vibrating.

    • Or it's a tiny fan

    • And I would guess the newfangled "barometric vent" is acting like a megaphone for all noisy components inside.

    • I would guess they chose an inductor too small and it is vibrating.

      Or, it could just be a fault in the hardware or firmware that controls audio - maybe it's just yer average digital noise coming right of the speaker. Plugging in those old earbuds you have lying around would help with the troubleshooting effort. Oh, wait...

    • No, inductors do not make sound in modern DCDC supply. Blame can probably rest on the capacitors. The modern and tiny ceramic caps change shape slightly when charging and discharging. Every so slightly - but this causes them to rub against the board and generate a "hiss". There are caps designed specifically for power supplies that are supposed to prevent this. I recently purchased an Intel NUC and when you take a closer look at the board you notice that all the large caps are mounted on standoffs - ra

      • I don't care what causes it, but it drives me nuts. I've had this on a Dell laptop (circa 2012) and on my current (2014) Macbook Pro. It's kind of terrible that this is now spreading to phones.

        I'm more and more convinced that society hit a local peak in technology quality in about the 2000-2010 decade. I hope the next stage of improvement comes soon; even purely mechanical things are going downhill at the moment (the front panel of my 2-year-old dishwasher is detaching from the door frame; makes we want t

      • No, inductors do not make sound in modern DCDC supply.

        What a silly statement to make. Modern? DCDC supplies have not changed in the last 20 years. The ability for a coil to make a whine has always come down to a combination of design choice and manufacturing. Caps designed for powersupplies have nothing to do with hiss and everything to do with low Effective Serial Resistance, a stat that makes them more effective at handling high transient current flows that are common in powersupplies.

        Also the stand-off's are a standard package components allowing those cann

        • Re:bad inductor selection (Score:5, Informative)

          by willy_me ( 212994 ) on Monday September 19, 2016 @11:19PM (#52921485)

          The big change in DCDC design is in the different modes of operation that a DCDC controller can support. It used to be simple pulse width modulation but now we have pulse width modulation and, to use a term adopted by Linear, "Burst" mode DCDC converters. The purpose of the "burst" mode is to achieve low power level efficiency by on/off modulating the DCDC converter. The resulting on/off modulation can be within the acoustic range even if the actual DCDC converter is switching in the MHz range. So Linear, TI, Analog - they all now support their own version of a "burst" mode.

          In the past 5 years, far more parts from various manufacturers are available for designing systems that goes to sleep but require always-on power rails. You used to have to pair a DCDC and LDO together to achieve the best of both worlds. And companies like Murata have capacitors specifically designed to assist in alleviating the whine. Check out their product line for a more detained description. I have designed and built power supplies that have had a noticeable whine - typically under low load. So I can confirm - it is the caps.

    • Very possible. We will know if it is ground saturation if the capacitative touch screen also starts acting up.

      Not enough info in the article for proper diagnosis.

  • #hissgate (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19, 2016 @02:54PM (#52918519)

    #hissgate

  • Fanboies are often the biggest critics. (Score:4, Informative)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Monday September 19, 2016 @02:56PM (#52918533)

    I have noticed this in most equiptment over the past 30+ years of computing. I remember hearing the processing noise from my old Amstrad PC-1512C 8086. Which didn't have any cooling fans so when I did heavy processing it would make a whining sound.
    I also hear a whining sound from my wireless router, I can often hear noise on LCD Displays, especially on a full screen refresh. I expect the the iPhone 7 it is doing so much stuff (whether it being useful or not is open for a another internet flame post) and the new CPU allows it to do more enough to cause a noise.

    • I can't use smooth scrolling on systems using Intel's GPUs because of the distinct noise they make.

      I typically disable smooth scrolling anyway, but whenever I come across an Intel-only box I don't control it's maddening.

    • Not saying that what you experience isnt real, but having a brand new video card a few years ago with coil whine, i learned a lot about it. It is VERY noticiable. To everyone. I used to game at night and my wife said the noise was keeping her awake. With headphones on, it wasnt bothering me and the card itself was fine. It was a high pitched whine which everyone could hear easily. It started about a month after i purchased this video card. I had to RMA it, but the successive cards i recieved back all had di

      • I listened to the noise in the "article" and it sounds more like a feedback from a hot mic coming out the speaker or something like that,

        That observation is just downright scary...

        No, of course they're not listening to you, right? RIGHT?!?!

    • Interesting, but what does the body have to do with the title of your post?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's coil whine from the switch mode power supply under heavy load. It's a common problem. The CPU runs at 1.8V or even less typically, and there is a little power supply that drops the battery 3.7V nominal to the right voltage.

  • Dr Archangel says ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Monday September 19, 2016 @02:59PM (#52918553) Journal

    Take two antiHISStamine and call Apple in the morning.

  • The headphone ports (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19, 2016 @02:59PM (#52918557)

    ...They're haunting Apple. "Bring us baaaaaack.....*hiss*......Bring us baaaaaaack....."

  • My guess (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Megahard ( 1053072 ) on Monday September 19, 2016 @03:00PM (#52918559)

    It's the sound of your soul being sucked into the device. That's why it's noticeable on a "brand new, just-unboxed device". Should go away after a few days, once you are completely soul-less.

  • Obviously just the hard disk spinning up and down. Apple should have considered these effects and used a small page file with more ram. Nothing to see here.

    Back to VisiCalc.

  • Apple Iphone Proud Sponsor (Score:5, Funny)

    by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Monday September 19, 2016 @03:07PM (#52918621)

    Apple iPhone, proud sponsor of house Slitherin.

  • Probably a combination of factors (Score:5, Informative)

    by wierd_w ( 1375923 ) on Monday September 19, 2016 @03:08PM (#52918625)

    Given that Apple is apparently quite obscessed with making their device the same thickness as a sheet of onion skin paper, the issue is likely a combination of things.

    Namely, thermal noise needs to be overcome with higher voltages, which then get switched at pretty high speeds. That switching of higher than normal voltages (because it is under load, and having to overcome passive cooling only) coupled with a most likely saturating floating ground, means RF signal leakage. Given that one of the proposed reasons for Apple's removal of the headphone jack was that they were having problems with RF noise being produced and picked up on the headphones (and nothing to do with "Courage") I find this likely, and suspect the issue to be more systemic than apple wants to admit, especially in light of the Samsung battery disaster.

    (EG, the reality that you can't reasonably push a design that thin without having very real problems with the electronics does not fly well with the ivory tower designers with sticks up their asses at Apple, but their marketing droids pay better attention, and realize this is a potential problem they need to be mum about. I would expect higher rates of failure from out of expected tolerance voltages on devices driven hard, and apple blaming the users, rather than the hardware like they should be.)

    • Re:Probably a combination of factors (Score:5, Interesting)

      by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Monday September 19, 2016 @04:50PM (#52919415)

      That's actually an explanation for their use of the word courage. It takes courage to release a product full of design flaws, masked by removing features you can't get working.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bidule ( 173941 )

      Namely, thermal noise needs to be overcome with higher voltages,

      I'm not sure this make sense.
      - Do iPhones have a higher voltage than other phones?
      - Are they somehow able to vary the voltage?
      - Are they meant to run hotter than others?

      Your initial assertions seems contrary to common sense. Could you explain it?

      • Re:Probably a combination of factors (Score:4, Interesting)

        by wierd_w ( 1375923 ) on Monday September 19, 2016 @10:17PM (#52921265)

        The CPU gets hot when in use. To overcome thermal noise, the voltage on the CPU goes up a little.

        There is an expected tolerance band for operation, and the control of the voltage on the CPU and ram has upper bounds for very good reasons.

        I am suggesting that the normal operation of this voltage regulation under computational load results in increased bus noise due to a saturated ground, and that apple considered this acceptable because most users will just be listening to mp3s, or playing casual crap on Facebook, and not taxing the system this way, making the issue statistically ignorable.

        The way you deal with signal bleed on a device that cannot be earth grounded is to have a very large conductor inside that serves as a floating ground. Usually this is sandwiched inside the PCB as a good thick copper layer. Apple wants a device that is practically lighter than air, and thin as a straight razor. Copper is pretty heavy, and extra layers inside the PCB add thickness. Both are things the idiots, I mean, "geniuses" in Cupertino think are trendy to do away with. As a consequence, I expect the grounding layer to be thinner than what is actually needed for the proper operation of the device at heavy load, resulting in ground saturation. When the ground saturates, coupled with a hot CPU from heavy load, the regulator pumps up the voltage to try to assure reliable signals are being generated. This adds to the problem, because now more heat is being added and the ground is already saturated, so rf noise leaks everywhere. Throw in a densely packed PCB, where lots of devices will pick up the noise, and you have a recipie for early component failure.

        All the devices are working within design, but the design is poorly considered.

        Rather than admit that the design is poorly considered, due to the absurdity of trying to make a high performance device that thin, I expect apple to blame users for overloading the phone instead. The noise only happens when the system is taxed, because it was designed to play on facebook, not number crunch.

        I expect the engineers decided that transient loads of 100% were acceptable because it takes time to saturate the ground, and most things a user will do won't saturate the CPU like that.

        For reference, most CPUs run between 1.2 and 1.5 vdc, with subtle changes up and down based on activity and temperature. This is normal, expected operation. In this case, the ground saturates when the CPU sits at 100% for a long time, and the voltage sits at 1.5v, with transient voltages from rf buildup pushing components outside that from the saturated ground.

        Hypothetically.

  • Fix it fix it fix it fix it!

  • We get that crappy design is causing the hiss. Thank you. Now please focus your efforts on more "hiss" puns.
  • So I guess the headphone jack had to go anyway if the electronic noise inside the case is bad enough to be audible.

  • Terrible noise? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nuckfuts ( 690967 ) on Monday September 19, 2016 @03:31PM (#52918801)

    I take it this is a first-world definition of "terrible"?

    I had to turn up my speakers to even hear the video.

  • Apple have been pushing to get multiple suppliers for each part of the iPhone, I assume to get more certainty in supply and competitive prices.
    Perhaps this is the reason why some people have issues and some don't.
    Maybe they had a few bad batches of inductors or ceramic capacitors from a supplier that are noisy?
    Maybe that's why some people have problems when upgrading their OS and some don't.
    Foxconn isn't the only manufacturer they use. Not all iPhones of the same model have the same components inside.

    They u

  • It's just your phone, judging you.
  • ... the phone is used underwater, w/ the headphone jack connected to the lightning connector at the same time that Bluetooth is connected to the earbuds? No wonder it would hiss!!!

  • I was just recently researching Dell XPS laptops which are notorious for this, and some of my thoughts were "That's why you pay more for Apple hardware I suppose, they'd never let anything with coil whine out of the door"

    Oh the times they are a changin'. That's why I don't buy their stuff any more, you're no longer paying more for better quality (which IMO I genuinely think used to be true, for a little while). You're paying more for the same old crap as everything else. Back to paying normal prices for

  • Well ok, not under load, but when scrolling the display in any capacity. Noise comes from a chip just near the volume rocker. I've got pretty good hearing for 38 and it drives me batty if I use the thing in bed on a quiet night. I was almost tempted to return the thing to be honest, my iPad air 2, no such issue.

    (It's more of a hiss / hum in one)

  • iPhone already emits enough thermal noise to be picked up from an AM receiver. You can even use it as a music transmitter.

    > https://github.com/fulldecent/... [github.com]

    The iPhone 7 works even better than the previous models.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • It doesn't blow up because it's venting pressure before an earth shattering kaboom. If yours isn't hissing, beware...

  • I bet someone is going to analyse the noise and derive data being computed by the device from it.

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