The Important Points
- Typical symptoms of “Audio IC disease” (AKA “loop disease”) include:
- Problems with audio during calls.
- Siri not hearing you.
- Greyed out voice memos and loudspeaker.
- iPhone gets stuck at “Apple logo” boot screen for much longer than usual.
- Tends to occur in older iPhone 7s and 7 Pluses.
- Believed to be caused by phone bending at a weak point, straining connection between motherboard and Audio IC.
- Some audio functions might still work, while others don’t.
- Apple has not yet acknowledged the issue.
- We can fix it for you- contact us today!
Introduction
If you’re an Apple iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus owner, there’s a new problem you should be aware of- “audio IC disease” (also known by some as “loop disease”). It’s a fault with the audio IC- or “audio chip”- that causes various symptoms including problems with audio during voice calls, Siri not hearing your voice, greyed out voice memos icon and a greyed out loudspeaker icon during calls.
(It should be made clear that this issue doesn’t affect all audio functionality. It’s quite common to have these problems with calls and Siri while (e.g.) you can still play an MP3 music file on your iPhone).
The phone also takes much longer than usual to boot.
The problem seems to generally get worse as affected phones age, most likely due to the accumulated strain and damage over the years. This would explain why the problem only seriously started coming to light approaching two years after the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus first launched. It also means that the problem is most likely to appear after the one-year warranty has passed.
The apparent cause is similar to the problem that caused “touch disease“ on the iPhone 6- a design fault lets the phone bend too much, straining then breaking the connection between ICs (chips) and the main board.
Now that you’ve read this, if you’re bored and simply want your phone fixed, you can stop reading here- contact us to arrange for your iPhone to get looked at, or bring it in to our Dundee store. On the other hand, if you want to find out more, read on!
Symptoms of Audio IC Disease
If your iPhone has any of these symptoms, it may be due to “audio IC disease” or “loop disease”.
- Various audio problems
- Listener on other end of phone can’t hear you, or hears static
- Voice memos are greyed out
- Siri can’t hear you
- Audio being dropped on voice calls
- Loudspeaker greyed out
- Intermittent static
- Long boot time (somewhere between three and five minutes)
- iTunes can detect the phone, but display remains stuck on Apple logo
- Home button haptic feedback works fine, but- again- display remains stuck on Apple logo
- Laggy touch response after entering passcode
A bent iPhone 7. Your iPhone 7 or 7 Plus might have bent slightly differently, but if it’s suffering from audio IC disease (loop disease), there’s a good chance that this is the cause anyway.
What’s the Cause?
It’s widely believed the problem is ultimately due to the phone bending at a weak point which happens to be where the audio IC is located, along with a couple of other important chips. When the motherboard inside bends, the solder pad connections to the flat audio IC get strained and eventually broken. In particular, most problems are due to the “master clock” C12 pad- which is essential to the functioning of the audio IC- becoming detached. (Other pads such as E12, G12 and H12 sometimes get damaged as well, but C12 is the most significant).
As we mentioned above, this is much the same problem that led to touch disease on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus- the phone is able to bend more than it should, which in turn flexes the motherboard and strains- then breaks- the connections between it and various ICs.
However, many people think that “audio IC disease” on the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus may end up being even worse.
We mentioned that taking a long time to boot was one symptom, with the phone looking like it’s stuck at the Apple logo for an extended time. It’s believed that this is because it’s constantly checking and rechecking (in a loop- hence “loop disease”) that the audio IC is ready before it proceeds. Normally this doesn’t take long enough to notice, but if the audio IC isn’t responding, it’ll keep doing this forever or until it times out (i.e. the amount of time allowed for the check is exceeded).
Although Apple try to keep the internals of their chips as secret as possible, it’s believed the reason that some non-call-related audio still works even after this is because the audio IC is effectively two (or more) distinct hardware circuits on one chip. The other apparently has its own, separate clock input and therefore isn’t affected by damage to (for example) the C12 clock input.
An issue for repair stores like ourselves is the risk of being wrongly blamed for the problem. That’s because, although many iPhone owners can go weeks or months without ever needing to turn their phone off in normal use, we have to do this before carrying out any repair work. Since the problem often only becomes obvious after the phone is turned back on again– most obviously the hanging at the boot stage- it would be understandable if a customer thought it had something to do with the (unrelated) repair, even though the fault was already there.
iPhone 7 exhibiting the greyed-out loudspeaker icon during a call.What Can Be Done About It?
Apple’s (Non) Response
At the time of writing (late August 2018), Apple has not yet acknowledged “audio IC disease”/”loop disease” or anything associated with it even though evidence has been growing for its existence for some time now.
This is similar to their response to touch disease issue on the iPhone 6. Apple failed to acknowledge that for several months despite mounting evidence. Even when forced- eventually- to concede its existence, their statement was evasively worded, insinuating that users were partly at fault (something which contradicted almost all independent research) and deflecting issues of responsibility on their part. Since audio IC disease has a very similar cause, we’ll see if they give the same response this time round.
It’s been claimed that some early victims of the loop disease problem had out-of-warranty phones replaced on the basis of a “known hardware failure”, but that this is no longer happening as numbers increase.
Since they haven’t yet acknowledged the issue, we can only assume that Apple will only offer the same options already available to any owners of out-of-warranty phones. That is, to buy at their own cost a refurbished replacement– at a significant percentage of the price of a new device- or to buy an entirely new phone. We don’t consider either of these reasonble if- as appears to be the case- the origin of the problem is Apple’s faulty design.
Disc Depot Can Fix It For You
At present, the only other available solution for out-of-warranty iPhones is to have them independently repaired. The good news is that at Disc Depot, we know how to do that, and it’ll cost you far less than what Apple are charging for a replacement phone. Some businesses will simply attempt to “reflow” the chip, which is easier for them but with greater risk of failure and isn’t reliable in the long term. We don’t do that- we’ll repair it properly by removing the audio IC and replacing the problematic connection with a wire.
(We suspect that even if Apple eventually offer an extended warranty for this as a known issue, much of what we said at our touch disease article regarding the drawbacks with their offer there will apply here too).
* Some people dislike the name “loop disease” because it’s not clear or descriptive of the problem for the average user, as well as being misleading. Most people would think of a “loop” as being when the phone gets stuck in a loop of constant rebooting, which isn’t the case here.
Audio IC repair; the chip has been removed and the pads are being repaired.
The pads have been repaired and the audio IC is now back in place and working again.
