[Galaxy S 4 Active Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] MechaBouncer:
Hello everyone! I have been trying to track down a problem with my Galaxy S4 Active that has been driving me nuts for a while. I figured that making a new thread would probably be best because I did not find my particular issue listed.

Basically, what happens is that I will make a call over Bluetooth and everything will be fine. Once this call has ended, all audio related to phone calls dies. The phone still behaves as if it is making and receiving calls, but nobody can hear me and I cannot hear them. Not over Bluetooth, through the earpiece, nor over the loudspeaker. It’s all dead. I also cannot hear it ringing if I dial out, but the phone itself still rings.

I have tried turning the Bluetooth device on and off, disabling Bluetooth and turning it back on, going into Airplane mode and back out again, turning speakerphone on and off, muting and unmuting the call, and muting and unmuting the phone itself. The only thing that fixes this situation is restarting the phone.

I recall this situation first started presenting itself after updating to the ML2 firmware, but it didn’t happen all the time. It became much more apparent after updating to the NE3 firmware. At that point I spent some more time looking into it and became able to readily duplicate the issue.

I have gone so far as to reflash the NE3 firmware with Odin 3.07 to see if the issue remained. Interestingly enough, this appeared to correct the issue until I started updating and reinstalling a few apps. So now I’m trying to track down exactly what did it.

I suspect that it may be the “OK Google” hotword scanning from Google Search because I had it set to detect “From any screen” as well as “From lock screen”. Although I did not have the “Bluetooth headset” setting enabled because I wanted to take that out of the equation. Once I turned off “From any screen”, the Bluetooth appears to be working normally.

Another possibility is that I had frozen S-Voice because it got in the way of the normal voice dialer. This has been restored. I also have to mention that the voice dialer appears to be more stable after disabling “From any screen” as well.

I also can’t say for sure, but it also seems to happen more frequently when charging. Although that may just be a coincidence as I normally do charge my phone when I connect it to Bluetooth. Also I have duplicated the issue when not charging and gotten it to work fine while on the charger. So it is probably just a coincidence.

Here is what I’m working with:

AT&T Galaxy S4 Active (SGH-i537) reflashed back to I537UCUCNE3 Android 4.4.2 stock firmware.

Jabra SP700 - Main device I’m testing with. Old Bluetooth 1.1 speakerphone that clips on a visor. Supports A2DP for an FM transmitter to stream music, but I have Media disabled on it. I tested with and without this setting and it made no difference. It worked great back when I was on MF3, but started having problems since I upgraded to ML2 that are easily replicated now on NE3.

Jabra BT620s - Secondary device that I tested with that also demonstrated the same problems. Although I haven’t tested as much as the SP700. This is a pair of stereo headphones that uses Bluetooth 1.2 and A2DP for streaming music. Also worked better with older firmwares, but I haven’t used it much lately save for testing this problem.

Installed/Updated Programs:

Facebook

Facebook Messenger

Google Authenticator

Google Chrome

Google Maps

Google Play Newsstand

Google Play Services

Google Play Store

Google Search

Google Voice

Google Hangouts

Jift

SuperSU

Titanium Backup

Titanium Backup PRO

towelroot

YouTube

Other apps that I updated and then I rolled back to get things working:

AllShareCase Dongle S/W Update

Amazon Kindle

ANT Radio Service

ANT+ Plugins Service

Antivirus & Security | Lookout

Beaming Service for Samsung

Beats Music

Blurb Checkout

Gmail

Google Drive

Google Play Books

Google Play Games

Google Play Movies

Google Text-to-Speech

Google+

GROUP PLAY

HP Print Service Plugin

Lux

myAT&T

Samsung Link

Samsung Print Service Plugin

Samsung Push Service

Samsung WatchON (Video)

Samsung WatchON (On TV)

YP - Yellow Pages local search

I also tested it quite a bit right before and after rooting it and it was working fine at the time, so I don’t believe that it’s related to root.

I would like to know if anyone else has encountered similar issues or can duplicate what I’m seeing?

Thanks!