I can appreciate sound advice and understand that you might repeatedly encounter this issue with people close to you. It can be very frustrating to see that they won’t listen or work on easily fixable issues with their device. So, when a random gonk on the internet faces the same problem, it’s likely that they also haven’t practiced good phone hygiene.

In this case, I can assure you that the speakers are clean. I probably should have clarified that my issue is with the earpiece, which, as you may know, is also a speaker and has given out over time. Last I checked, hardware can and will fail eventually, and it just so happens that it occurred sooner than I had anticipated in this case. Still, four years is a decent runtime for a phone.

I have to agree with you. I went from an 11 Pro Max to a 15 Pro. And while there is definitely improvement, I thought it would be more. I don’t regret the upgrade, my 11’s speakers were not really doing a good job anymore. Calling was a nuisance, I’d have to up the volume completely and still have a hard time hearing the person on the other end. The camera upgrades are nice, and the 120 Hz display is a nice bonus as it feels smoother thanks to that. I like the upgrade, but all things considered, if it hadn’t been for my speaker issues, I could have waited another year.