Why is the Apple Watch Series 7 speaker wheezing? Solution!

The first time we received such a watch with speaker malfunction, we just didn't pay attention to it, but the more often we were met with the same problem, the more obvious the reason became - it's a manufacturer's defect.

So, the problem number one is a design miscalculation of Apple engineers, when designing smart watches is that the mesh on the speaker has too large cells and dust and all sorts of tiny debris gets into the speaker.

Troubleshooting

We disassemble the Apple Watch Series 7 45mm and see the speaker, which is protected by a protective mesh.

On the photo we can see that metallized particles penetrated through the mesh and stuck to the speaker magnet. This did not happen with the previous series of watches. At least we have never encountered such a problem. We have a lot of old watches in disassembly. For example, examining the speakers on the Apple Watch Series 1 and 2, we could see that they are practically clean, barely noticeable minor hits of very fine dust.

Obviously, such a malfunction requires replacement of the speaker, and here comes problem number two - suppliers do not have such a spare part. We can order the speaker assembly on Chinese web sites, but assembly of high quality is not cheap, and we will have to wait for about a month.

An amazing solution came when we were not expecting it - looking at the speaker, we thought that it looks very similar to the speakers of Apple Watch Series 4 and 5 series, which are not a problem to buy. If we are right, we can try to replace only the speaker, separate from the assembly itself.

We warned the customer about the problem and possible solutions and he agreed to repair or remake.

Let's move on to the repair

We remove the speaker from the Apple Watch Series 4 44mm. We can see that the speaker is held on three plastic rivets and additionally glued to the metal frame. Using a scalpel, we cut off the speaker's flat cable, leaving about 3 millimeters of margin.

Do the same with the Apple Watch Series 7 cable. Glue the Series 4 speaker to the Series 7 frame with the cable. We clean the top layer of the Watch 4 speaker cable and solder the cable with the connector from the Watch 7 speaker.

We had to insulate the top with tape and had to put it in place, but the assembly did not want to fit into the case, the metal part on the case, to which the bar holding the battery is screwed, got in the way. We had to remove it temporarily with a soldering iron to free up space.

After soldering the bar back in place and reassembling, we checked the watch, the sound became clear without rattling, and the signs of malfunction disappeared.