Handsets

PSA: something broke voice calling on some HTC One M8 and M7 models

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HTC One Double Dip Flip case DSC09947

Software bugs on our Android devices, while a good majority of the time are nothing more than minor annoyances, can occasionally be much greater than that. Take a handful of HTC One M8 and M7 users who are reportedly no longer able to perform one of their phone’s most basic of functions: make a voice call.

Right now, there doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason on why the functionality stopped, or even which HTC One M8s and M7 are affected (A&T models only?), but users describe a problem where both the caller and receiver can’t hear so much as a dial tone when placing a call. There are a number of temporary fixes (like clearing cache/data on Google Play Services, Google Play Framework, or even uninstalling Chrome), but some of those users have noticed the issue returning shortly after that. While we’d hate to suggest a factory reset, but we noticed someone had luck going that route (but understandable if you want to avoid that).

Some are guessing it could have had something to do with a recent HTC Service Pack update in the Play Store as many a user are flocking there to voice their displeasure. I know both my One M8 on both T-Mobile and Verizon are working without a hitch and they’ve all been updated to the most recent Service Pack, so really, who knows.

We’ll reach out to HTC for comment but in the meantime have any of you noticed your HTC One M8 or M7 is no longer able to make calls? Did you find a fix?

Thanks, @RobertoRaymon!

[XDA, Google Play]

Chris Chavez
I've been obsessed with consumer technology for about as long as I can remember, be it video games, photography, or mobile devices. If you can plug it in, I have to own it. Preparing for the day when Android finally becomes self-aware and I get to welcome our new robot overlords.

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87 Comments

  1. What exactly is a “voice” call? Is there any other type of call other than a call using your “voice”? Isn’t it just “make a call”?

    The term “voice call” makes no sense. It’s just a “call”.

    1. Video call.

      Though, I wonder what the A&T model is… and how to get a dial tone on a cell phone.

      1. Ok.. yes, there is “video calling” agreed. I guess it just feels like this is just another cool techie jargon term that does not need to be used.. it is so simple to just say “it broke the ability to make a phone call”.

        1. Voice Call, Video Call, Voice Mail.

          1. Voicemail isn’t a type of call man lol

  2. Yes! I’ve had this issue (HTC M7 T-mobile) for more than a few weeks. Very annoying! Even did a factory reset. No help. However, since yesterday’s service pack update, I haven’t noticed it.. yet.

  3. Let me guess… an update to enable IMS calls/VoLTE? Hahah – you need to udpate the PCM value better for ATT. Fails…

  4. I sure hope there is no dial tone! :P

    1. My Verizon Droid Turbo isn’t getting dial tone either, but I can still make calls. Hmmmm.

    2. You mean not only for the caller but also the receiver?
      Lol

      1. Cell phones don’t have dial tones, so yes!

        1. OK, I’ll try it again, maybe this way will help –

          Of the phones that you have used that did have dial tones – traditional land lines – and you got a call so you were the receiver – did you hear a dial tone?

          No, you only hear a dial tone when you’re in caller mode.

          So yes, cell phones don’t have dial tones but neither do landlines for receivers. That was the second thing wrong with that sentence in the article.

          1. I know, I was agreeing with you :)

  5. Same Problem. I have a T-Mobile M7 running 4.4.3.

    Things I’ve noticed in the past few days:

    Some calls I can’t hear anything (ringing or the person on the other line). Both incoming and outgoing.

    I’ve been told by people calling me that my phone goes straight to voicemail even though it’s on and has good signal.

    Restarting gets rid of this for a little bit.

    I spoke with Tmo and they “reset me on the network”. — Didn’t help.

  6. I haven’t experienced any problems on my Verizon HTC One M8.

  7. My HTC One M8 on Sprint recently couldn’t receive or send phone calls. Restarting temporarily helped until I lost all connectivity. A factory reset cured this.

  8. 0 issues here on my Verizon M8 running lollipop GPE.

  9. Experienced this yesterday on my tmo m7. Factory data reset fixed the problem.

  10. experienced this on M8 GPE 5.0: all incoming calls would crash phone/dialer and send person to voicemail. I would not even see the missed call. All i saw was a split second of who was calling the the force close error. I had to factory reset the phone and all worked again.

  11. Funny this article comes out only days after my friend told me his HTC One M7 calls aren’t working properly. This is in Australia too. So not just restricted to America.

  12. Tmobile USA must’ve just been hit.

  13. I’m on Tmobile network and I lost voice calling 2 days ago. I tried doing a factory reset which fixed the problem temporarily, voice calling is currently not working

  14. I’m from Australia and same problem here. I have had to factory reset my phone for the last 3 mornings, I can hear calls all day but go to bed and wake up the next morning and it’s happened all over again!!

    1. Same same grrrr. only thing worse is i can’t blame telstra

  15. I can’t find any other stories online about this problem. I have tried the suggested fixes in the story, but they haven’t worked. A factory reset seems pointless if it’ll just break again. If anyone finds a solution, please come and post it here.

    1. Disable Google Framework Services app as a workaround.

  16. Im not having any problem making calls on talkatone ap. Wifi and data working overtime though.

  17. I am on Vodafone in NL with my M7. I had the problem which was fixed with an update stating to ‘enhance the voicecall experience’. Although going from none to working voice calls might be called different it did the trick..

  18. Deleting APN (Access Point Name) or forcing 2G only fixes this issue for me. Found this after having perfomed Factory Reset twice. Calling works until a few moments after APN is added and Optus yesinternet comes on-line. Bottom line, calls can be made without any internet access.

    1. Found this after having perfomed Factory Reset twice. Calling works until a few moments after APN is added and Optus yesinternet comes on-line.

    2. Maybe there’s a backdoor to our phones that allows governments to tap into them, and it is not working for HTC One phones :O

      1. That’s a good point. I live in Australia, using Optus Amaysim. Tried a Vodafone SIM card still the same.

  19. M7…Factory reset… No luck…
    Update from 5dec helped.

  20. M7 Vodacom, south Africa, same issues

  21. M7 Telstra Australia. My phone is fine (Cyanogenmod) while my girlfriends identical phone is playing up.

  22. That’s why I always read the comments on updates, thanks to the guys who posted not to update HTC Service Pack. I wonder if it can be fixed if you uninstall it and the factory version takes over?

  23. Just happened after answering a call on my M7 on Verizon. Caller called back and all was well. Not good…She said she could hear me, but I couldn’t hear anything. Must be a speaker issue after the service pack.

  24. Vodafone UK, HTC One M8 converted from Sense to Google Play Edition – voice calls absolutely fine :-)

    1. Me Too :D!!! (Vodafone UK HTC One M8, did you buy yours during the Halloween £289 offer too?)

      1. No I didn’t :-) The M8 is my company phone! My personal phone is a Nexus 6, just upgraded from the Nexus 5.

        Have you converted yours to the Google Play Edition or are you running Sense still?

        1. First thing i did when i got it home. Bummed about sunshine’s £15 “s off” cost though, but worth it as i wanted OTA etc.

          1. Yeah the cost was a bit steep, especially as mine is only a work phone!

            I ran into massive problems on the last steps on flashing RUU over ADB last night – I very nearly had a bricked phone…not sure my employer would’ve been too keen on me bricking a phone for mods! But having the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9, going to KitKat on the M8 was painful.

            Dat Lollipop on the M8 taste so sweet! :-)

          2. Yeah i can imagine. There is a way to copy the RUU over to an external sd card and flashing it directly over HTC’s bootloader options. Saves you from any disconnecting usb cable issues.

            I have no issues with RUU flashing, but have been doing this since my M7 so maybe just more use to it.

          3. Installation from Ext SD is exactly the method I switched to when I was having the issues. Closest I’ve ever been to having a paperweight for a device!

            Very used to it myself (certainly don’t think this route is for the inexperienced/fainthearted! Just prefer doing everything via ADB. Not sure why, feel I have more control over it I guess.

          4. Yeah, i love adb!
            No.1 reason i switched to android from an iPhone.
            Now i have 100+ reasons…

          5. Pleased to hear it – same here!

  25. My wife has a has stock T-Mobile HTC One and nothing seems to be working. Even updated to latest Google play service 6.5.99 also doesnt help. She is beyond livid! LOL

  26. My wife has had this problem off and on for I’d say 6 months now on her T mobile m7. It has been much more frequent the last couple weeks though.

  27. I am having this exact problem. Just started a few days ago and no idea why. Only thing that temporarily fixes it for me is a reboot but it comes back shortly after. I have a Rogers M7 BTW

  28. There is a good discussion on reddit’s HTCONE subreddit, with several fix approaches. I finally got my stock t-mobile M7 working by de-activating Google Play services and restarting. I had ~10 failed attempts of other fixes, including 2x factory wipes and countless restarts. HTC’s chat support proposed that I send them the phone and pay for a repair since it is >1 year old.

    1. Well if it’s a software issue, what good will it be for your phone to be replaced?

  29. To my knowledge it was first sighted at the end of October. I suffered it early November, cleared temporarily with clearing Google apps’ data, happened again a week later, same fix and not since then. But others have had more trouble clearing it – it may depend on details of your particular settings, I don’t know.

    I do not think it can be related to the recent HTC service pack because it pre-dates it by several weeks. ROM developers have reported it to be a Google update caused the bug, and given that it wouldn’t be the first bug caused by Google (massive power drains from location services, for example) I’m inclined to believe them.

    1. It seems to be a Sense UI vs Google Services Framework issue.
      A recent Google update made them incompatible. But I think it’s HTC’s responsibility to be compatible with Andoid services and not the other way around.

  30. Flashing a Sense-less rom was the only way for me, anything with HTC Sense would not work for me, even clearing every partition in the phone and flashing stock, even tried a few custom sense roms to no avail, I’d say sense was the issue but I’ve seen on XDA people saying their S4’s were affected too and most people there seem to think it has something to do with google’s recent updates. Really a pain regardless, hope people figure this out.

  31. Finally talked to someone at HTC who knew what they were talking about. They are well aware of the problem and taking full responsibility they are currently gathering data on who all was affected in order push a permanent solution to customers ASAP. Temporally you can disable google services framework and restart the phone and it should work after a few hours turn re-enable google services framework. This of course is only a temporary solution and does not work for everyone. Also Wi-Fi calling is not affected.

    1. I’m glad someone called HTC! :)
      I hope they fix it before it turns mainstream media. Because this started in Nov, and became more prevalend on 12/11, and it’s being reported in US and Australia for different carriers.

  32. Go into recovery mode, hold power + volume up when red exclamation point shows up, and clear cache partition then reboot. My wife’s phone had this problem and online live chat with HTC gave me this solution. Still working 2 days after so far.

  33. Been having the same issue intermittently for months on my M7 from sprint. Phone will go a day or two with being able to make or receive a call, then randomly start working.

    It’s just weird that the data connection stays working – at least on mine – so I don’t even know it’s an issue until people start getting annoyed enough that they email or Facebook msg etc to see why I’m not answering.

  34. My gf and I have had issues several times where we don’t receive texts or calls, but data works.. and have to restart phones to get them to work. Or, hers went into do not disturb twice.. a functionality she didn’t know existed and never used. M8s on Sprint.

  35. M7 with Telstra in Australia. Same issue started last week although I did have some similar issues briefly in Oct/Nov. I also have the pink camera problem and a host of others:

    Phone power LED not functioning
    Vibrate either doesn’t work or is pathetic
    Cannot use front mic for calls (speaker works only) or voice command although it tests fine in diagnostics
    Phone heats up and chews battery in basic tasks like browsing this page

    So basically I have a phone that can’t make calls unless on speaker, can’t take photos and can’t hear voice commands. Very ordinary, have not explored warranty options due to other people’s poor experiences.

    1. Your carrier will handle the warranty for you. Not sure if it the same warranty from HTC for Australia, but here it is: http://www.htc.com/us/advantage/

      The pink camera is a hardware issue, my carrier and replaced it for free after almost a year with the phone.

      Likewise the Speaker issue / voice command, could be one of the two mics of your HTC is blocked, hence noise reduction kicks in.

      Go to your carrier store, you have nothing to lose and they may replace your phone.

  36. This is the only thing that fixed my issue:

    “Ive seen a lot of workarounds for this, but this is the only one that seems to work universally without breaking anything else. I also haven’t seen it mentioned here yet (surprisingly). Requires root.

    Go to play store and install [Disable Service](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cn.wq.disableservice)

    Launch it and locate the listing for Google Play Services

    Disable checkinservice ONLY

    Reboot

    Source: http://forum.xda-developers.com/htc-one/help/how-to-fix-current-audio-calls-issue-t2972498

    1. The funny thing is that I already had check-in service disabled. DisablinG Google framework seems to work though.

  37. It might have been posted, but why would either caller in a cell phone initiated call ever hear a dial tone?

    1. It means the ringing tone, you know when the phone is ringing on the receiver’s end you get a tone on your side so you know the call is coming through?
      With this bug, you hear nothing, just suddenly you see the call timer kick in, no sound.

      1. It should have said ringer, not dial tone. That was my point.

        1. I’m a grammar nazi myself, though as long as I get the gist it’s no biggie :)

          1. Nah!! You are just a Grammar Peon if you accept that. =.P

  38. Im having the same problem since past week… and there dent seem to be any solution – already did factory reset which worked for like a day – dont feel like doing a factory reset every day… Anybody have any different solutions – advice?? Thanks

    1. Disable Google Framework Services app.

  39. I have been experiencing the same issue on M7 (unlocked, not rooted). Tried clearing data and cache on Google services but it didn’t work. After an hard reset it worked fine for a day then suddenly phone calls became mute again.
    This morning I received an OTA update that claimed to “bug fix and improve phone call experience”… Now it works just fine. If someone’s interested I can give details of the update.
    Cheers

    1. I’m certainly interested in the OTA update. Can you provide details?

      1. Go to settings then about, then click software updates. Refresh to check for the latest updates & the newest update should pop up. I’m planning to install in a few minutes.

      2. The software version after the update is 6.09.401.11. I forgot to take a screenshot when the update notification appeared, but there was only a little description about the phone call bug fixing… I think this is the only (but awaited) change.
        BTW great bug but quick fix… Good job HTC

    2. Which is your carrier? I don’t have any available OTA Updates for T-Mobile

      1. Italy – TIM
        I received the update this morning. I guess you only have to wait a few hours/days ;)

    3. I’v got that problem that update info would b good

      1. Read below ;)

  40. Have an HTC One M8 on Verizon and suddenly it stopped the abilibty to make outbound calls…message was “Call Not Sent”. Tried everything I could think of, then went to Verizon store and they did same. Finally called HTC tech support and their only suggestion was factory reset, which worked, but of course creates all kinds of new work to re-customize my phone…

  41. T-Mobile M7 user here. Got latest HTC Service Pack update last week, I still have the issue.
    Turnaround is to disable Google Framework Services.

  42. Heh heh…

  43. Problem solved… you have to update your M7/8 to the latest update and then it should work fine… at least mine is working fine for the past couple hours… hope it will stay this way

  44. Tried clearing the phone cache but that didn’t work. Finally fixed this by following the Google Services reset outlined below.

    FYI, on my phone both OTA and wifi calling were affected.

    Overall, I find the lack of any official response from HTC appalling. THIS BROKE MY PHONE. I understand that the modern smartphone ecosystem is very complex, so I understand that sometimes serious bugs make it into production, but I would expect a reputable company to acknowledge and address them.

    Bottom line: this will be the last handset from HTC that I every buy again (or recommend).

  45. Uninstall HTC service pack update and make it unable to update automatically and you will be able to make calls again! Stupid app crippled my phone until I did this. Make sure to restart after uninstall

  46. HTC released on OTA update to fix the issue last night. I am using an M7 on T-Mobile network. The update took about 10 minutes and voice calling is back to normal. So everyone check their phone for updates!!

    1. I got this as well. At first the problem was still there, even in Safe Mode. After a little while though it went away and everything is normal… sort of. My phone reverted back to the HTC keyboard from Google Keyboard for some reason. I uninstalled and reinstalled and all is well.

      I also spoke with an HTC rep this morning that said this is fix number one and a second should be out this weekend (whatever that means).

      If you still have this issue try making a call with heaphones plugged into your phone or on speakerphone. Both of these worked for me when I had this issue.

      On a side note, Google Now voice commands did not work either while this issue was ongoing. The mic looked like it was getting very loud audio from something even though it was quiet.

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