The Motorola DEFY turned out to be a pretty rugged device in our testing, but it turns out that there's one part about it that's not so tough: the earpiece.  There are a number of DEFY owners reporting that the speaker in their earpiece -- the very thing you need to hear the person on the other end of a call -- has been flat out dying.  Motorola is investigating the problem, but the popular theory right now is that the headphone jack, which sits very close to the earpiece, is putting pressure on the earpiece contacts and shorting out its connections.

This definitely isn't the first time we've heard of a new handset having problems shortly after release, but usually the problems seem to be more cosmetic (like light leakage).  A non-functioning earpiece is kind of a big deal, though, so hopefully Moto can get this sorted out soon.  We may not use our phones as actual phones very much anymore, but it'd certainly nice to be able to make a phone call when you need to.

Via MobileCrunch, Android Police, Motorola Support