Given that I was still having volume issues, though I have only heard my g/f voice mail, and called into my own voice mail, and volume still seems really low, I can not say for sure...leaning towards it being more of a system/hardware issue overall.

Again, if nothing else, I feel like I'm getting similar volume levels with the phone's earpiece "at any part of the ear". "For me", it was worth the knowledge and minor performance gain.

After the first few cuts, and the initial curved groove was started, the screen shaves down fairly easily. The hardest part was to not go too deep with the blade, but was issue free for the most part. FWIW, the opening is now about 2x the original width, and I'll probably go another 0.5mm wider on the top and bottom (since I still can not tell how the speaker is aligned. Its hard to tell with the pics, but I actually cut into the screen protector on the top end.