[OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren Questions & Answers] siani_8:
I bought the McLaren when it first came out. I loved the device and it worked flawlessly. I saw no need to sweat rooting the device and wasn't an option back then anyway. Even now it doesn't seem as clean as the earlier android phones I've rooted and owned but the world changes.

Unfortunately, I cracked my screen and was sent a refurb. I started dealing with sound corruption issues shortly afterwards. I never gave up on the phone and I knew there was some kind of conflict with newer Google updates my device pretty early on. I did MANY factory resets(erase all) and cleared cache both individually and as well as through recovery and it would only temporarily fix my issue. Then it would come back on it's own without any changes made by me.

At first, I had a lot of success uninstalling updates for the main Google app, clearing cache and data (sometimes resetting system app preferences and then rebooting into recovery where I would clear cache again and reboot. That worked for a while but as Google and other Google services received updates it became more difficult to fix using this method. By the time 11 dropped and the issue got worse, I was convinced I must have gotten either A) a bad egg or B) it was my fault and I turned the phone off in the middle of an install causing some kind of corruption that persisted through the updates somehow. The truth though may be somewhere between a phone that someone returned for a good reason and the increasingly more insidious nature of Google Apps. I was eventually defeated, made too many changes that the phone didn't agree with, got the Qualcom Error and was faced with either getting a new phone or seeking aid through a Community I've always respected.

Since then I've tried clean installs of the more recent RoMs but the issue was persistant. If it wasn't for the fact that the phone's speaker and mic would work again after a clean install (offline no SiM) but then get corrupted again within 5 minutes, I think I would have assumed a hardware issue only (still might be a bad egg on some level).

I decided to go back further, this time installing 10.0.36, which I guessed might be far enough back to a time before any issues and is a bit lighter (around 10 preinstalled apps lighter not including system). To my dismay (again, still offline) the mic and speaker corruption/conflict was still present. I began making one change at a time (mostly targeting anything mic or Google related) and it became clearer over the last few days that it was definitely Google and Google's zombie-like behavior to change settings back on it's own. I think that company went way past the point of overreach and intrusion a long time ago.

What happens is that ALL of the Google apps have (modify system settings) checked by default and I believe all it takes is one of them to have that access to let it's Google buddies come back to the party.

I would love to know where the conflict actually lies on a deeper level but that's probably a bit out my bubble of current knowledge and I just really need to have a working phone more than answers atm.

Now I'm praying that dropping in my Sim and signing in to the real owner (I seriously overpaid for a phone that's mostly not mine) of my phone doesn't somehow give Google access to some backup plan to allow itself free reign all up in my settings again. If it does, someone in charge of the google might be getting a 5G McLaren shoved into places that see less sun...in my imagination of course.