Buzzing / static sound coming from back of new iPhone 7 Plus

[aj8690]

How did you first hear the noise? Did you hear it while you used the phone or did you actively listen for it by pressing the phone against your ear? I mean, I cannot hear it unless it is really quiet and I press the back of the phone against my ear - and to be honest when do you do that?

The first time I heard it was when I was at home watching TV. I had placed the phone on my ottoman, approximately 3 or 4 feet from where I was sitting. The phone was downloading my photos (~7,000) from iCloud but also optimizing storage which is what I think made the CPU work so hard and the noise so apparent. Between commercials I heard the weird buzz and I thought it was from my rMBP which I was actually using at the time (so the room was not 100% silent but pretty quiet--TV was quiet between commercials but there was a low amount of fan noise. The buzz was much louder than the fan noise of the MacBook even though the MacBook was in front of me and the phone was several feet away. I muted the TV and listened to rMBP but the sound was not coming from it. Tried to figure out what the help the buzz was and finally found the source (iPhone 7 Plus). Took me a minute to figure out the source because, like I've said several times, none of my previous iPhones ever made a NOTICEABLE noise before. I was not just holding my ear up to the phone for the hell of it, looking for a problem--thats just dumb. Although I'm sure plenty of members here do stuff like that. Lol I have better things to do than look for something to be wrong, but this was quite noticible for me. That being said, I will say that the noise has lowered to an acceptable level. For me, the only way I hear the noise today now is by holding it up to my ear, which is fine with me. Maybe it was so loud and apparent the first day due to heavy CPU usage from restoring back ups, indexing, and etc. However, I have not had a chance to push the CPU again with intense games or photo editing or 4K video recording. I have a feeling the noise will increase in those types of situations.

 

[SMIDG3T]

I am skeptical about reports that the "noise" was a widespread occurrence prior to the iPhone 7. Forums are outlets for every possible issue that obsessive iPhone owners can possibly notice. I remember reading about dead pixels, stuck pixels, dim displays, uneven backlighting, backlight bleeding, yellowish displays, flickering displays, bending, reduced battery life, hard home buttons, soft home buttons, and so on... But I do not remember reading about hissing, buzzing, static or clicking noises.

That's because no one realised it was happening with past devices. Now everyone knows about it, they're freaking out when it's totally normal.

 

[mi7chy]

I am skeptical about reports that the "noise" was a widespread occurrence prior to the iPhone 7. Forums are outlets for every possible issue that obsessive iPhone owners can possibly notice. I remember reading about dead pixels, stuck pixels, dim displays, uneven backlighting, backlight bleeding, yellowish displays, flickering displays, bending, reduced battery life, hard home buttons, soft home buttons, and so on... But I do not remember reading about hissing, buzzing, static or clicking noises.

Ditto. Sounds like apologists downplaying the issue on the new device.

 

[nyjoe84]

So is this a normal thing or not? I spoke with apple, I didn't bring it in, they are sending me a new one in three days and I'm returning my current iPhone 7 plus black 128GB. Has anyone brought it into the Genius Bar yet ?

 

[netnative]

That's because no one realised it was happening with past devices. Now everyone knows about it, they're freaking out when it's totally normal.

After reading the post below, would you say that it would be difficult to become aware of, or to realize, the occurrence of such noise?

The first time I heard it was when I was at home watching TV. I had placed the phone on my ottoman, approximately 3 or 4 feet from where I was sitting. The phone was downloading my photos (~7,000) from iCloud but also optimizing storage which is what I think made the CPU work so hard and the noise so apparent. Between commercials I heard the weird buzz and I thought it was from my rMBP which I was actually using at the time (so the room was not 100% silent but pretty quiet--TV was quiet between commercials but there was a low amount of fan noise. The buzz was much louder than the fan noise of the MacBook even though the MacBook was in front of me and the phone was several feet away. I muted the TV and listened to rMBP but the sound was not coming from it. Tried to figure out what the help the buzz was and finally found the source (iPhone 7 Plus). Took me a minute to figure out the source because, like I've said several times, none of my previous iPhones ever made a NOTICEABLE noise before. I was not just holding my ear up to the phone for the hell of it, looking for a problem--thats just dumb. Although I'm sure plenty of members here do stuff like that. Lol I have better things to do than look for something to be wrong, but this was quite noticible for me. That being said, I will say that the noise has lowered to an acceptable level. For me, the only way I hear the noise today now is by holding it up to my ear, which is fine with me. Maybe it was so loud and apparent the first day due to heavy CPU usage from restoring back ups, indexing, and etc. However, I have not had a chance to push the CPU again with intense games or photo editing or 4K video recording. I have a feeling the noise will increase in those types of situations.

 

[Hogg]

Just booted up my 6s and ran GFXBench GL.

It makes a noise too. Not only that, the 6s is very hot while it's running these tests while the 7 stayed cool.

Others are reporting it's happening on earlier devices than the 6s.

Not an issue guys and not a "defect". It's been there for ages. It's just because you've only just noticed it you're freaking out.

It isn't freaking out. Well, maybe the normal % are.

There are very calm users, tech sites, Apple sites...reporting the same exact thing. They're all in agreement. No one is arguing that the 6 series and before has a slight noise. That's well known. The hiss and click coming from the 7's that are affected, is quite a bit louder than the 6's. Hence why people are discussing it.

It could very will be a defect, as not all are reporting it being as severe as others. Could just be that a few batches are affected. We will see

 

[Vanilla35]

So is this a normal thing or not? I spoke with apple, I didn't bring it in, they are sending me a new one in three days and I'm returning my current iPhone 7 plus black 128GB. Has anyone brought it into the Genius Bar yet ?

Let's be real, has anyone ever gotten a real technically accurate response from a genius? We make far better conclusions here on these threads than any of them do. The best response I've ever gotten from them was "Yeah that doesn't seem normal, let's get you a new one".

 

[nyjoe84]

Let's be real, has anyone ever gotten a real technically accurate response from a genius? We make far better conclusions here on these threads than any of them do. The best response I've ever gotten from them was "Yeah that doesn't seem normal, let's get you a new one".

Yeah your right, I agree with you. Well see later this week when I get the one to see if it hisses

 

[SMIDG3T]

After reading the post below, would you say that it would be difficult to become aware of, or to realize, the occurrence of such noise?

The 7 may well be a bit louder than the 6s. So what? It has two more cores, it'd make sense if it did. My 6s made the noise. I don't expect Apple to say anything about this. We know they work really hard on these chips.

 

[spooned12000rpm]

Spunds like the same sort of noise my rMBP makes.

 

[Soundman1488]

Finally there is some talk of this coming to light. I got my 7+ 128GB Silver in the mail on 9/16 and immediately when I hooked it up to the charger I got a hissing/buzzing/clicking sound. The sound was noticeable with the iPhone sitting on the desk and me being a few feet away. I ask a coworker if he "heard anything strange" and he immediately picked up it. You can hear it without having to put it up to your ear. Mine is quite loud. I imagine if it is a defect, there will be varying degrees of loudness. I work at an Apple Authorized Service Center and at the time the techs and I agreed that it was either the OIS on the new rear cameras or the processor. We didn't open it up. Maybe Apple will shed some light on this issue in the coming week.

Since launch day I've noticed it every time I charge my phone and when I am doing something labor intensive on the preocessor like playing a game or when I did a restore. Mine also gets quite warm at the at the same time. Much much warmer than any other iPhone I've ever had. Despite all this however, my iPhone works great and have not had any issues.

 

[Dormammu]

Finally there is some talk of this coming to light. I got my 7+ 128GB Silver in the mail on 9/16 and immediately when I hooked it up to the charger I got a hissing/buzzing/clicking sound. I work at an Apple Authorized Service Center and at the time the techs and I agreed that it was either the OIS on the new rear cameras or the processor. We didn't open it up. Maybe Apple will shed some light on this issue in the coming week.

Since launch day I've noticed it every time I charge my phone and when I am doing something labor intensive on the preocessor like playing a game or when I did a restore. Mine also gets quite warm at the at the same time. Much much warmer than any other iPhone I've ever had.

All of this is making me nervous about the phone I am expecting in a couple days. Yikes.

 

[netnative]

Finally there is some talk of this coming to light. I got my 7+ 128GB Silver in the mail on 9/16 and immediately when I hooked it up to the charger I got a hissing/buzzing/clicking sound. The sound was noticeable with the iPhone sitting on the desk and me being a few feet away. I ask a coworker if he "heard anything strange" and he immediately picked up it. You can hear it without having to put it up to your ear. Mine is quite loud. I imagine if it is a defect, there will be varying degrees of loudness. I work at an Apple Authorized Service Center and at the time the techs and I agreed that it was either the OIS on the new rear cameras or the processor. We didn't open it up. Maybe Apple will shed some light on this issue in the coming week.

Since launch day I've noticed it every time I charge my phone and when I am doing something labor intensive on the preocessor like playing a game or when I did a restore. Mine also gets quite warm at the at the same time. Much much warmer than any other iPhone I've ever had. Despite all this however, my iPhone works great and have not had any issues.

Perhaps it might be to your benefit not getting the Jet Black iPhone 7 Plus until November --when, hopefully, this problem will be solved.

 

[Lspice]

So is this a normal thing or not? I spoke with apple, I didn't bring it in, they are sending me a new one in three days and I'm returning my current iPhone 7 plus black 128GB. Has anyone brought it into the Genius Bar yet ?

So you just called customer care? I really don't want to go to the store and exchange the phone. And I don't want to send this one back before I get a replacement. So they will just send you a replacement and you ship your defective one back and they process it like an exchange?

 

[mi7chy]

The 7 may well be a bit louder than the 6s. So what? It has two more cores, it'd make sense if it did.

It actually doesn't make sense considering all the utilities available identify the A10 as running two-cores active at a time, either two high performance cores or the two high efficiency cores but not all four cores at the same time and iPhone 7 doesn't even have split view task switching so nothing would take advantage of more than two cores.

 

[sunking101]

Several years back you couldn't buy a Windows laptop without hearing a whine from that generation of Intel chips. Thankfully they fixed that issue in later generations but heck, processor whine does my head in.

 

[nyjoe84]

So you just called customer care? I really don't want to go to the store and exchange the phone. And I don't want to send this one back before I get a replacement. So they will just send you a replacement and you ship your defective one back and they process it like an exchange?

Yes I called Apple since I purchased it from them directly. They are sending me a brand new one and I'm sending this one back in a box they are supplying me with. I don't wanna go into a store and deal with the lines bc right now it's still crazy.

 

[dwd3885]

So is this a normal thing or not? I spoke with apple, I didn't bring it in, they are sending me a new one in three days and I'm returning my current iPhone 7 plus black 128GB. Has anyone brought it into the Genius Bar yet ?

Who with apple did you talk with? I want to do this too, but they offered an applecare replacement and i don't want that
[doublepost=1474238854][/doublepost]

Yes I called Apple since I purchased it from them directly. They are sending me a brand new one and I'm sending this one back in a box they are supplying me with. I don't wanna go into a store and deal with the lines bc right now it's still crazy.

Did you talk with customer care?

 

[netnative]

So you just called customer care? I really don't want to go to the store and exchange the phone. And I don't want to send this one back before I get a replacement. So they will just send you a replacement and you ship your defective one back and they process it like an exchange?

Good question. An exchange through the mail would be ideal. However, if the noise problem was severe I would return it and continue using my 6s Plus until Apple had an inventory of noise-free units.

 

[nyjoe84]

Who with apple did you talk with? I want to do this too, but they offered an applecare replacement and i don't want that
[doublepost=1474238854][/doublepost]

Did you talk with customer care?

What do you mean an apple care replacement ? My unit is less then three days old I said I want a new one since it's less the. 14 days. Be admit about it.

 

[Lspice]

Yes I called Apple since I purchased it from them directly. They are sending me a brand new one and I'm sending this one back in a box they are supplying me with. I don't wanna go into a store and deal with the lines bc right now it's still crazy.

Ok cool. Sounds easy enough. Maybe I'll hop on the chat tomorrow at work and see what happens. It's not bothering me much, but if I can get it replaced and try again I should at least try. And I don't want to go to the store at all.

 

[GoCubsGo]

So you just called customer care? I really don't want to go to the store and exchange the phone. And I don't want to send this one back before I get a replacement. So they will just send you a replacement and you ship your defective one back and they process it like an exchange?

I think they put a hold on your credit card, right?

Who with apple did you talk with? I want to do this too, but they offered an applecare replacement and i don't want that
[doublepost=1474238854][/doublepost]

Did you talk with customer care?

There shouldn't be any refurb units right now.

 

[nyjoe84]

I first said what are the chances local stores have them he said slim, so I said well send me a brand new one. I was at a Apple Store in my city trust me not close in Brooklyn NY and it was crazy. They all were nasty and the lines were crazy. I'm not dealing with that. My advice if your free now call them. Also if they ask did you back it up and restore back to factory settings and try over just say yes bc they are saying it's possibly a software glitch and I can tell you it's the mechanics of the phone. Wether or not it's the new processor or a faulty unit. Well see

 

[dwd3885]

I think they put a hold on your credit card, right?
There shouldn't be any refurb units right now.

Right but I want a brand new one in original box and all

 

[BootsWalking]

I have no proof of this but I suspect the phones with the new intel modem are the ones who have the noise issue. The first years of the intel based MBPs I experienced the same issue and i rememembered reading about several other users experiencing the same thing.

Doubtful since the noise is reported to occur under heavy load without specific network activity. An easy way to prove/disprove though would be to run the test in airplane mode.
[doublepost=1474240746][/doublepost]Just tried a friend's 7 with both Geekbench 4 and Octane benchmark and didn't hear a peep, even with my ear right next to the upper rear of the phone.