Motorola is investigating voice quality issues that some users of the Atrix — the phone notable for its ability to dock with a laptop-like device — are reporting.
“We’ve been looking into this for some time,” Mark, a Motorola employee and forum manager, wrote on a thread of complaints about the problem.
Users are reporting that people they talk to say their voices sound muted. “Everyone tells me that my voice sounds muffled or muted to the point that I have to speak very loud for them to understand me,” one user going by the name “rhendrix” wrote in the forum.
Mark asked forum visitors to answer a string of questions about the problem such as whether they use a case, if they might be obstructing one of the microphones when holding the phone, what noise suppression setting they use and the network signal strength when the problem occurs.
A couple of people reported receiving an e-mail from Motorola with details about the source of the problem, and one of them shared the mail on the forum. However, a forum manager removed the posting. “This is an unprecedented action for us, but these are special circumstances. Information was posted here that has not been confirmed and should not have been shared,” Matt, the forum moderator, wrote.
A forum user said that the removed e-mail pointed to hardware flaws. “He says it is a hardware problem,” someone going by the name “hotcoffee” wrote, referring to the removed message. That person also implied that Motorola had promised a resolution by May. “I can wait for the fix to provide the final fix in May,” “hotcoffee” wrote.
Motorola did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The company unveiled the Atrix in January. It’s an Android phone that can be docked in a device with a keyboard and monitor for more comfortable typing and viewing. It resembles a laptop but doesn’t have a CPU. The Atrix can also be attached to a multimedia dock that connects the phone to an HD monitor.
Nancy Gohring covers mobile phones and cloud computing for The IDG News Service. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @idgnancy. Nancy’s e-mail address is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com