Top speaker volume is low

Greetings!

The piece that you said you snagged with a Q-Tip near the charging port is most likely a grounding clip of some sort, there are many of these in the phone and should not cause any issues.

Usually when my customers come in with low volume speakers it is caused by a build up of dirt in the speaker grill, since you just replaced the screen I doubt that it would be dirty, but if it visible looks dirty you can try to clean it.

The way I do this is:

1. Take tweezer and gently scrape and dirt loose from the top of the grill being careful not to poke a hole through the grill.

2. Then I take canned air and blow the grill free of any debris.

3. I use a toothbrush and isopropyl alcohol to "scrub" on the grill.

4. Again, blow the speaker out.

5. Test to see if it helped.

Again I doubt this is it, but maybe worth a try.

Since the speaker is working, but just quiet, I doubt that it is a connection issue, but you may try opening the phone to see if you have the cable for the ear speaker connected well.

Depending on the quality of screen purchase, it may be a case where the grill was not made properly and is solid instead of having holes in it. You can check this by taking the ear speaker back off the screen and hold the screen up to a light to see if there are holes in the grill.