Samsung :: AT&T No Audio On A737 When Slid Open?

I was recently on a call when I noticed that I'd lost audio. I'd had the same problem before, but a reboot always fixed it before. This time, a reboot didn't help.After rebooting a second time, I connected my phone to my PC using a USB cable and loaded Samsung PC Studio. (As silly as it may sound, this step fixed my wife's phone several months back when it started to severely lag between keypresses.) No help there, either.I then turned the volume all the way up, started playing a song on my phone, and held my ear up close to the receiver. I could hear a very, very faint sound.

As soon as I slid the phone shut, the speaker went back to full volume.If that were the end of it, I could live with a silly workaround (make call, put call on speakerphone, slide phone shut, take call off speakerphone). But on a recent call, after using the usual workaround, I lost audio even with the phone slid shut.

Samsung tech support walked me through resetting my phone settings to factory defaults (Menu > Settings > (9) Reset Settings > Select "Phone Settings" > OK > Confirm). Still no go. I stopped short of wiping the phone completely because I didn't want to lose my Address Book and because I strongly believe the internal speaker is dying.Whenever the audio has cut in and out, it sounds exactly like a speaker shorting out.

I don't want to get a new phone and extend my contract with AT&T. I don't want to move to another cell phone provider yet (I'm hoping to hold out for when the Galaxy Nexus comes to Sprint then wait for the first price drop), either. I don't want to have to use a Bluetooth headset every time I make or receive a call. (Bluetooth audio works just fine.) And there's no way I can justify paying Samsung $70 to fix a phone I got in 2008.