I bought a Mudita Kompakt mainly to make phone calls, and I usually use wired 3.5 mm jack headphones.
The issue is that, from what I’ve tested, the headset standard with an inline microphone doesn’t work properly on the Mudita Kompakt. In my case, the headphone microphone doesn’t work, which makes a basic feature like hands-free calling unusable.
What’s most frustrating is that these headphones work perfectly on other devices: I tested them on my computer and on an iPhone using an adapter, and the microphone works fine. So it doesn’t look like a problem with the headphones.
Honestly, I don’t understand how a phone that costs around €400 can fail at something as basic as using a wired headset microphone for calls.
What options do we have as customers (refund, replacement, repair, or a software update)?
@tc22435 Thank you for reaching out & I’m sorry that you’re having some issues. Can you please let me know what make & model are your headphones, so that I can check with our team about what could possibly be happening?
My headphones are Apple EarPods with the 3.5mm headphone plug (wired TRRS headset with inline microphone, CTIA standard).
On the Mudita Kompakt, the audio works, but the inline microphone is not detected / not used during calls (the phone uses its built-in mic instead).
I tested the same EarPods on my windows computer and on an iPhone (with an adapter) and the microphone works fine, so the headset seems OK.
Could you please confirm whether the Kompakt fully supports 3.5mm TRRS headset microphones (CTIA), and if this is a known issue or if there’s any workaround?
I have the exact same problem with a pair of Sennheisers. You may have some luck with other headphones (some old Marshalls do work for me, but they are unusable for other unrelated to Kompakt reasons, so yeah, I just don’t use 3,5 mic and this is the biggeest Kompakt flaw for me).
Our team told me that Apple one- even if they are the 3.5mm jack headphones might not function all the great (meaning all the features). It’s not a blanket statement, but it’s to be expected.
I thought it was just me that was having issues with the Apple EarPods with the 3.5mm headphone plug. Honestly, this is a bit ridiculous. Compatibility with these is such a basic feature. I’ve used these headphones on several different devices, and I’ve never had an issue.
I’m trying hard to love the Kompakt, but things like this are not making it easy.
@zmeiri33 I’m sorry that you’re experiencing some issues. Can you be more specific with what’s happening? Like are you not about to hear sounds AT ALL, is it muffled? Or maybe the mic is not working.
Have you tried a different 3.5mm jack with microphone. It appears that not every 3.5mm TRRS jack works, some people have reported issues with Apple wired earbuds. I have a cheap 10 euro brandless in ear headset which works like a charm. Sound during calls and voice recordings are crisp and clear.
I dug into this a little further and I think I found what the culprit is. A standard TRRS 3.5mm jack (so stereo audio, mic and ground) has 4 segments, divided by 3 rings. When looking at an Apple wired earbud set jack and a brandless variant, they look the same. But they are not.
Apple changes the extra ring with a different order of audio + mic. Where standards may say use 1 2 3 4 as the order Apple has it as 1 2 4 3. So they switched two contacts. Lots of hardware is able to autodetect, but not all and Mudita Kompakt apparently is one of then who doesn’t automatically the detect the swap that Apple made (for reasons unknown to mankind). See Phone connector (audio) - Wikipedia
And they’re probably not the only manufacturer, as I found (a) few others. This should be solveable by a firmware update, as it appears firmware of audio equipment can detect on which contact the mic is and change the order if necessary.
Unfortunately, that’s something we’ve also saw when we tested different headphones from Apple. Our team thinks that it’s just Apple being apple & restricting it, BUT since you said you’ve used these headphones with other Android phones & they worked, I’m going to ask my team if it could be anything else.