Headphone jack problem

[Omroth]

I plug my headphones into the phone with no media playing.

A quiet alarm-like sound plays for 4 seconds, then goes off for 4 seconds, then goes back on - forever.

Really disturbing!

[alix]

There are some hardware problems -- yours seems to belong to the kind of problem I have with mic muted on case closed. PC planes a firmware update this week, let's see if it solves our hardware related glitches. I have tested the jack on my cosmo, but I don't have this kind of issue. Sound comes out as it should, and no self-repeating alarm coming and going, sorry.

[vldmr]

PC planes a firmware update this week, let's see if it solves our hardware related glitches.

I would not expect PC to fix any glitch affecting me if I would not report it directly to them myself.
PC might even not be aware of problems discussed here. Did you report your problem to them?

[alix]

Yes, I did, I mention the discussions on this forum and they told me that they are unaware of this kind of bug, which is indeed surprising, since the front (cover) microphone does work perfectly when I am recording my voice. Lot of users have also other hardware issues (external screen using too much battery, repeated letters while typing, powering-on issues), and I would bet that most of them are software (firmware) related. One should not forget that we have a very complex hardware design, and that one problem could have several and indirect causes -- in your case f.ex. incorrect routing of sound (as in my case with the mic), or too low current addressed to the jack etc. Beside, I do not exclude that some of the issues are Android related -- the problem with mic and sound, as well as the problem with battery drain are known bugs related to Android Pie which we have on the cosmo.

Fixing that sort of problems needs time, even if we are all frustrated that we can not use our cosmo straight away at the moment. All the more so if those issues are -- at least partly -- related to Android, which means that the engineer team at PC has to adapt Android to their hardware and publish patches for that which is also not a simple task (Android has not fixed the mic and sound issue for a lot of other phones at the moment, and they probably do not invest time in fixing issues for such a niche phone like the cosmo). At the moment, I think that PC wants to deliver the cosmos which have not been delivered, so they probably do not invest much time in bugs fixing.

All this is maybe sad, but it is part of the adventurous trip into a unique device that will surely be improved time after time as it was with the Gemini -- if I recall correctly, the Gemini users have also had 2-3 difficult months with a not much functional device at the beginning.

You can also report bugs by writing an email at: hello@planetcom.co.uk

[Daniel W]

I plug my headphones into the phone with no media playing. A quiet alarm-like sound plays for 4 seconds, then goes off for 4 seconds, then goes back on - forever. Really disturbing!

For what it's worth, when not playing any sound, the Gemini is quite noisy too. Basically, what's happening is that when no audio is playing, the Gemini will power down most of the sound hardware, which leaves the input to the headphone amplifier floating, which more or less makes it behave like a small antenna, picking up all sorts of electrical noise from inside the device. The on-off-on-off pattern most likely has to do with the power management of the Cosmo, making less noise when the electronics is a bit less active.

I plugged a recorder into my Gemini and got this:

Gemini_Background_Noise.mp3

Here's a (low bitrate mono) mp3 (free to use, should anyone be interested)
 [ Invalid Attachment ]
I had to crank the recording level quite a bit, so the hiss at the end mainly comes from the recorder, not the Gemini itself.

[Edit] Or maybe they actually do turn off the amplifier, and we're hearing noise exactly because it is off, and is thus not properly grounding anything. While that would mean the noise must be powerful enough to drive headphones unamplifed, which I find a tad weird, it would make more sense, from a power savings perspective, especially as a bit of the noise remains even with the screen off (though if also in flight mode, the noise is almost gone).