[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] manveruppd:
Yesterday, something strange happened... The speaker and microphone on my Universal stopped working - all of a sudden, out of hte blue, and completely inexplicably!

I spent 4 hours on a train yesterday, and was listening to music on my Uni nearly all the way through. I had also used it to make calls and it was working fine. Since I was using normal headphones rather than the bundled hands-free headset, making a call involved unplugging the headphones and holding the phone to my ear - so I know that, for at least part of the day, the phone's speaker and mic where working perfectly!

I kept on listening to music on my cans until the journey ended. I then check my phone and find 9 missed calls, from various people. "Strange," I thought, "I had the headphones on all the time - why didn't I hear it ring?"

I try to call back some of the people who had tried to get to me. As I watch "dialling..." switch to "connected", I hold the phone up to my ear and say "Hello...?" and hear nothing in return! I try again several times, with the same result. I try soft-resetting the phone a few times. I try switching from 3G to GPRS in case it was a radio problem. Nope, not a radio problem, as I can still send and receive texts. A few start coming in. They read "I CANT HEAR U! R U ALLRIGHT?" Great, so it's not just the speaker, it's the microphone too. I try making another call, but using speakerphone: doesn't work, and in fact won't even enter speakerphone mode! I press "Speakerphone on" on the touchscreen but it just doesn't want to go there - the speakerphone icon doesn't appear on the status bar, and the button doesn't change to "Spreakerphone off" as it should do.

I get home, do several more resets. No result. I try plugging in the headphones and playing an mp3 file. As I suspected: I can hear just fine through the 'phones, but when I try to unplug them to see if there would be music coming out through the phone's speakers as well, they stay mute.

Great, I thought, phone's busted! Well, still works... but not as a phone! Unless I permanently use some hands free solution. So, an unwieldy device just got more awkward to use!

I leave it disassembled (battery and sim card out) and put it in a drawer. I'm already thinking about new phones to buy when I go to sleep. The next morning, I decide I need to check my calendar, so I put my phone back together and switch it on. The battery had run down completely: it now thinks it's January 1st 2006. Happy days, I remember them: my phone worked back then. Then, all of a sudden, someone calls me and, oh joy of joys! It RINGS! I can HEAR it! It's 2006 again! I answer, casually have a conversation on a working phone, and hang up. Problem solved! Phone shopping averted!

The question is, why would this weirdness happen? The speaker and mic stopped working LITERALLY in the middle of using them! I was sure that they had gone, that it was a hardware problem and it would need repair or replacement, but no, it turns out it was some kind of software problem which leaving the phone off overnight fixed! Why would it break so suddenly, and why would just leaving it off fix it? Anyone vaguely tech-savvy want to hazard a guess?