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After not quite six years, the replacement speaker I hacked into our Ooma Telo2 VOIP gadget failed:

Quite by coincidence, a few days earlier a friend reported the speaker in her Ooma Telo2 had failed. This seems to be a common failure mode, with the rest of the gadget continuing to work fine.

The failed speaker showed continuity through its coil and, in fact, still had the same 8 Ω DC resistance as an identical speaker pulled from the Drawer o’ Small Speakers. It did not, however, make a sound when connected to a signal generator, where the new speaker squeaked happily.

So it seems the speaker failed by a mechanical jam, rather than an electrical / wiring failure. It’s not as though we play thrash metal music through the thing, but apparently the magnet disintegrated:

Yes, the coil gap is full of nicely oriented magnetic particles:

If Samsung (or whoever built the speaker) used a poorly sealed neodymium magnet, then it would crumble exactly as shown.

I wonder if that’s how the original speaker failed.

Installing the identical replacement speaker involved more hot melt glue and, as expected, restored the Telo2 to normal operation:

I can do that repair eight more times …