Subwoofer broke my GS4 headphone jack. What can I do??

[amb240]

I was listening to music through my galaxy s4 plugged into an ipod dock using an auxilary cable and I thought it would be cool to try to plug in a subwoofer (I'm dumb), so i used a headphone splitter cable and plugged in another auxilary cable to the subwoofer and the original one into the ipod dock. I was listening to music fine and then my dad had another old (atleast 6 or 7 years old) subwoofer sitting around and he plugged it in instead of the other one that I was using to test to see if it still worked. It made a loud bass noise that did not match the music I was playing at all, so my dad just put it back away and decided that it doesn't work anymore.... After he left, I realized that there was a static noise coming through the ipod dock and no music anymore... I though that this was just the ipod dock that was broken, but then i tried playing the FM radio and it still worked fine.. I told my dad that I think the subwoofer broke the aux in on the ipod dock and he freaked out and said that I shouldn't have been messing around with subwoofers. Now I am trying to listen to music through my headphones on my GS4 and all I hear is static. The speakers work fine and everything else works fine on my phone still but I just cannot get anything to come out of the headphone jack other than static.. What are my options? Was it really the old subwoofer, or was it because I shouldn't have been hooking it up like this in the first place? Is there any way that I can fix my phone on my own? Thanks.

 

[Rukbat]

There were 2 problems - you were hooking up multiple speakers to one source. If the speakers weren't bridge inputs (inputs that put no load on the device they're plugged into) you overloaded something in the phone. And that old superwoofer was probably defective, and probably fed some DC voltage back into the phone. (Also, plugging and unplugging powered audio devices in and out is one of the""bad ideas". Turn everything off first. It sounds cool at a show, when the bassist plugs in live and the speakers howl back from a guitar string. But they're getting paid enough for that gig to replace a speaker or amp.)

Your only option at this point is to (bring the phone to a shop and have them) determine where the damage is - the jack, the wires or the motherboard. The jack and wires are replaceable and not too expensive. (If it's a burned out wire you might see a "parts" charge - but you probably won't.) Please don't try to "save money" by doing it yourself. Fixing the things you broke when you did it will cost a lot more than the original repair would have.

If it's the motherboard? Well, it's a GS4, so it would probably pay to have a new one put in - but it won't be cheap.

Next time, use the earphone jack for what it was designed to do - have earphones plugged into it.

 

[bobolinko]

Your only option at this point is to (bring the phone to a shop and have them) determine where the damage is -

Actually, a more important step has been left out for you to do.

Have you made sure that the "static" earphones work on another system? and have you tried another known good earphone set on this "non working at the moment" phone?

That would help isolate where the problem is, The speaker source is most often what drives the headphone so there may be nothing wrong with the phone except the headphones.

Just my 2

 

[amb240]

I tested my headphones on my macbook pro and pc, they still work perfectly fine. While I was at school today I tested my friends headphones on my phone, and all I get is static still... I also tried calling people on my phone and sometimes their voices get distorted and hard to hear. I guess I'm just going to have to bring it to a shop or something.

 

[cocokasper]

if the circuits are anything like my laptop audio jack.... you prolly fried the transistor that switches the audio between the speaker and the jack... but it could be microcontrolled by a chip or even your core. in that case.... you're screwed and have no options but insurance swap.
Or give a sobb story how your official samsung headphones stopped working...
act like you don't know how it happened... hope for a warranty exchange/repair.