Month: March 2015

The last few times I’ve tried to use Skype from my phone, I’ve had a problem where the person I’m calling says I sound like a chipmunk and they can’t understand anything I say. The first time it happened, I didn’t really think anything of it. I just figured there was something messed up with Skype and/or my phone that would work itself out after some time. But then it happened again a few weeks later, so I figured I should do some troubleshooting.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Skype, but no dice–the problem persisted. Then I did what I probably should’ve done first: googled “android skype chipmunk.” The first hit was an AT&T forum with a bunch of people describing my situation. Essentially, “I have a Galaxy S4 and peeps can’t understand me because I’m chipmunk’d.”

The accepted answer on the thread said this:

Think I figured it out – I had enabled ‘OK Google’ from any screen – turning it back off solved the issue.

Gah, for real? I headed over to the Google app and disabled the option to listen for “Ok Google” from any screen. Sure enough, problem solved. This is a disappointing resolution because I really like saying “Ok Google” to initiate and execute voice searches from anywhere, but apparently I have to choose between having that and having to manually turn it off when I use Skype.

After scouring forums for a while longer, I did find a Hangouts thread where some Google folks acknowledged that they were looking into the issue but no word on finding a cause or timeline for a fix. Other posters on the forum cited problems with LG phones. This coupled with the fact that it’s an issue with video chatting in Skype and Hangouts indicate that this is not a Samsung or Skype problem.

So, okay Google… Fix this!