Klarton: Water Eject Cleaner

Water in the speaker sounds as if someone had put a cushion in front of it. Klarton plays a low tone whose vibration pushes the droplets out of the grille — the same principle the Apple Watch uses to dry itself out. One tap starts a run. You hold the phone at a slight angle with the speaker pointing down, and fifteen seconds later it is over. Then there is measuring. Klarton plays a series of test tones and listens through the microphone to how loudly they actually arrive. Measure once before a run and once after, and the comparison shows whether more of the tone gets through. The app also looks for the frequency at which your particular device resonates most strongly, and checks whether one of the two speakers sounds muffled. If that frequency clearly stands out, the water mode then picks it up by itself. The often quoted 165 hertz is only an average across many device generations — yours has a value of its own. Measuring needs the microphone, and nothing else does. What arrives there stays in memory, is never stored and never leaves the device. Without a measurement the microphone is not switched on at all. Besides water there is a mode against dust in the grille and a gentle run from 60 to 400 hertz. If you know exactly what you are after, you can set the frequency by hand, anywhere from 60 hertz to 20 kilohertz. The self-test asks you how the speaker sounds before and afterwards, and puts the two side by side. Honestly, an app cannot offer more than that here: there is no part inside a phone that could measure water in the speaker chamber. What you hear is the only judgement there is — and Klarton will not invent a number to go with it. The app costs nothing. There are no ads, no account and no sign-up. The only time it goes online is to ask the App Store whether a newer version exists, without any identifier. Klarton helps with water in the speaker openings. Water inside the device is a case for a service appointment, not for a tone. How much one run achieves depends on the device and on the amount of water.