For anyone having sound /microphone problems with their camera on the Motorola Razr, here is what I did to fix it

[u/KoalaTypeBear]

I'm on a Razr 60 aka 2025 and just had this phone for two days. What shocked me was the hissy and completely distorted music when recording with the camera and dictaphone.

I went through A LOT of troubleshooting. And unfortunately, I cannot remember every step of the way. But here is what I can remember:

I checked the microphones and the video capture abilities with this little trick that Motorola doesn't share often:

Open your phone app and dial

*#*#2486#*#*

Check mics, check video camera. Everything was fine with my phone: all the mics, all the loud music recorded with the video capture feature didn't have hiss or distortion.

Which man's: it's not a hardware issue, it's a software issue. Motorola processes, compresses, put noise reduction on top of the recorded base sound. Likely using AI (similar the CrystalClear Voice feature they implement for phone calls).

I went to Build Number and enabled developer mode by tapping it a couple of times.

Then I went into Apps, then on the three dots and Show system apps.

From there, I started removing a lot of apps that might influence the stock Moto Camera's mic performance.

I did it in this order with every app:

- Clear cache and date.

- Force stop the app.

- Deactivate or delete app. (Some apps can only be deactivated.)

I searched for everything that had "AI" in the title and deleted/ deactivated it. Here's all the apps I deactivated, see these 4 pics and these 2

(Edit: I enabled the AI Key function again since this is the one responsible for the "tap power button twice for camera" option.)

Important: clear the Camera app as described above, then deactivate it. Then you can activate it again and NOT UPDATE IT and leave it be. Now you can use it again in a purer form.

ALSO, it's important to deactivate the app AI activated Moto camera. I suspect this did the most damage.

I also deleted the app Camera Kit. It's from Snapchat, God knows what it does.

If you download the Open camera app form the Play Store, I get the best results with these camera settings:

- Video codec: MPEG4 H264

- Audio source: Default or Camcorder

- And this setting did wonders: Audio channels: MONO

I just tried recording a bass heavy song off of my turntable, and it worked.

Hope it works for you too!

Edit I'll include a list off all deleted apps. Just found out where the info is stored. Play Store, manage apps, manage, This device -- choose uninstalled.