Apple acknowledges earpiece crackling issue, says fix incoming

There are some iPhone 8 owners who are running into an issue with the phone’s earpiece. When they make a call, the earpiece makes a disruptive “crackling” or “static” sound which disrupts the audio. Dozens of users have reported experiencing the issue on the MacRumors forums, Apple’s support forums, and Reddit.

Apple has made a statement that the issue only comes up in a “small number” of cases and that the company is working on a software update to fix the problem. “We are aware of the issue which is affecting customers in a small number of cases,” an Apple spokesperson has stated. “Our team is at work on a fix, which will be included in an upcoming software release.”

The reason for the issue is not clear and seems to have impacted both the 8 and 8 Plus variants. Owners have indicated that this is happening across different carriers and in different parts of the world, too.

The static crackling only occurs during some phone and Facetime calls. That however does not happen during every call, and is not present when using the earpiece as a loudspeaker. This could mean that it could be a software problem, like Apple is saying. This could also be because the hardware is not consistently displaying the issue.

Apple has not offered a timeline when the bug fix would happen. It normally issues multiple updates in the weeks and months after putting out a new phone and operating system.