The wave of technical problems surrounding the market launch of this year's Apple flagships continues to grow, after owners of new models report an unpleasant audio defect. According to numerous user reports on popular technology forums and platforms, the new iPhone 18 Pro and the larger iPhone 18 Pro Max suffer from strange and intermittent noises coming from the device's speakers.
The complaints describe the sounds in different ways - from a faint crackling and ticking to a random click or static crackle. An interesting technical detail is that the problems mainly affect the upper speaker for calls, while the main lower speaker retains its normal functioning.
The behavior of the defect is extremely inconsistent, with some users reporting that they hear the annoying rustling constantly, while others only notice it during specific actions - such as opening applications, receiving notifications, appearing on the virtual keyboard on the screen, or during voice calls over a cellular network. Some of the affected owners even manage to cause the sound simulatively by quickly sliding the brightness bar on the display or switching airplane mode in quick succession.
The situation is complicated by the fact that the recent software update to iOS 27.0.1, which was released by the American giant mainly to solve another serious problem with self-restarting after unsuccessful Face ID recognition, fails to eliminate the audio anomaly. Early reports indicate that even users who have returned their affected devices to the store for replacement are receiving brand new units that exhibit the exact same defect. As of now, there has been no official comment or acknowledgement from the company about the issue, leaving open the question of whether this is a software bug in iOS 27 or a deeper hardware flaw that may require a major service campaign.