iPhone 4 loss of sound.

[Ordy]

Hi. My 16GB I Phone 4 from around Jan 2011, running on IOS 6 has suddenly decided that it will not play music or Audiobooks through its own speaker. It plays fine through ear-phones or through a docking station and the volume controls (buttons & slider) work fine. However, as soon as the earphone jack is removed, the volume slider control disappears from the screen immediately and even though the music is still ‘playing’ there is complete silence. The Vol buttons have no effect. Otherwise, the phone works perfectly and plays Voice Memos quite happily through its speaker, its only music & Audiobooks that have a problem.
I’m afraid that any advice kindly offered will have to be in layman’s terms. Updating to IOS 6 pretty much stretched my IT skills to the limit. Any help would be gratefully received.
Cheers, Ordy.

 

[iPhone Bits]

Hi. My 16GB I Phone 4 from around Jan 2011, running on IOS 6 has suddenly decided that it will not play music or Audiobooks through its own speaker. It plays fine through ear-phones or through a docking station and the volume controls (buttons & slider) work fine. However, as soon as the earphone jack is removed, the volume slider control disappears from the screen immediately and even though the music is still ‘playing’ there is complete silence. The Vol buttons have no effect. Otherwise, the phone works perfectly and plays Voice Memos quite happily through its speaker, its only music & Audiobooks that have a problem.
I’m afraid that any advice kindly offered will have to be in layman’s terms. Updating to IOS 6 pretty much stretched my IT skills to the limit. Any help would be gratefully received.
Cheers, Ordy.

Hi there, to be honest it sounds like you have a hardware fault, most likely the headphone jack is faulty, if you are not competent in opening your iPhone we can provide a repair service at competitive prices, click the link in signature for a quote.

One thing you can try is to clean out the headphone jack with some pure alcohol, but if this works it may only last for a while, basically whats wrong is that your iPhone still thinks there is headphones plugged in which is why it will output sound to external loudspeaker

 

[Ordy]

Thanks iPhone Bits, that sounds very probable now you mention it. And thanks for the offer of repair but I think I'll just upgrade to a 5 in spring. I was hoping it was some mute setting that I had inadvertantly set up, but hey, life goes on.....

 

[Menel]

Hi. My 16GB I Phone 4 from around Jan 2011, running on IOS 6 has suddenly decided that it will not play music or Audiobooks through its own speaker. It plays fine through ear-phones or through a docking station and the volume controls (buttons & slider) work fine. However, as soon as the earphone jack is removed, the volume slider control disappears from the screen immediately and even though the music is still ‘playing’ there is complete silence. The Vol buttons have no effect. Otherwise, the phone works perfectly and plays Voice Memos quite happily through its speaker, its only music & Audiobooks that have a problem.
I’m afraid that any advice kindly offered will have to be in layman’s terms. Updating to IOS 6 pretty much stretched my IT skills to the limit. Any help would be gratefully received.
Cheers, Ordy.

Audio bugs introduced with iOS 6. Lots of users reporting in of various glitches where some things work and others don't.

I've more often seen alerts/keyboard taps broken; but music working.

Restart your phone.

 

[Ordy]

Thanks Menel. This fault appeared before I updated to IOS6.
The first thing I did when I noticed the problem was a hard re-start.
A couple of weeks ago, the in car charger stopped working (from the cigarette lighter socket.) So, based on i Phone Bits' suggestion, I cleaned out the ear-phone and docking ports. The docking port in particular was full of lint, dust & debris but no fix unfortunately. I'll check in car charging tomorrow.
I guess the phone thinks it is still docked due to some damage in the port. Just glad it still charges from the PC USB con.
Warning: Don't use cheap & nasty car charger cables.
Otherwise, it's no biggie, I'll just live with it pro-tem, then upgrade.
Thanks again anyway. Cheers.