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iPhone 4 - No sound from earpiece

T

tgabe213

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 15, 2010
4
0
Got my phone Thursday, setup went fine. Took a phone call on Friday. Sound was fine. Later that night, I used my Aux input in my car to listen to something off my phone.

This morning I got a phone call, and couldn't hear anything. Retried the call a few times. Rebooted, same thing. Switch to speaker phone, I can hear a phone call fine.

Ideas? Hardware or software?
 
iPhone 4. No earpiece sound.

Same thing here. I occasionally use my headphones to talk on the phone and it had been working fine for a few weeks, then all of a sudden I place a call and no sound comes out of the earpiece. I can get sound through the speakers and when I plug in headphones but none whatsoever through the earpiece in the phone. Idk what to do. Blowing in the earpiece hasn't worked. Turning it on and off didn't help as well as restarting, and squeezing the phone didn't help either as stated on other forums. Help!?
 
Just talked to Apple support, sounds like a few others have had the problem but they don't know what it is yet. They just recommended I try a restore from backup which I'll do later tonight or tomorrow.
 
I had this problem with my 3g a year or two ago. Only a full restore from iTunes fixed it and i never had the problem again. It wasnt an ip4 but it might be worth a shot for you to try.
 
Skabaloz said:
Same thing here. I occasionally use my headphones to talk on the phone and it had been working fine for a few weeks, then all of a sudden I place a call and no sound comes out of the earpiece. I can get sound through the speakers and when I plug in headphones but none whatsoever through the earpiece in the phone. Idk what to do. Blowing in the earpiece hasn't worked. Turning it on and off didn't help as well as restarting, and squeezing the phone didn't help either as stated on other forums. Help!?
Click to expand...

Yes, I have had something similar happen today. Was on a call then the sound in the earpiece went a bit crackely and then cut out.

If listen to my voicemail messages with the volume right up I can just about hear something but its distorted. But its safe to say as a phone its pretty useless now. Everything else seems to work fine and if I plug in headphones or turn on the speaker its fine.

Instant reaction is a hardware problem but will try a restore tonight.

A trip to the apple store is needed I fear.
 
Check the headphone port, on my old iPhone there was a piece of lint in there that was causing the phone to think it was using headphones to talk.
 
Done a restore and its still not working.

Sounds like the earphone speaker is malfunctioning as can hear extremely low volume distortion/crackling when receiving a call.

Not happy.

Genius appointment booked for Sunday when I expect them to replace the phone.
 
osti said:
Done a restore and its still not working.

Sounds like the earphone speaker is malfunctioning as can hear extremely low volume distortion/crackling when receiving a call.

Not happy.

Genius appointment booked for Sunday when I expect them to replace the phone.
Click to expand...

have you tried turning up the volume when you received a call? Is it all the way up? Sometimes I will assume that the volume is up but turns out it's not and that I have to turn it up once in a while.
 
osti said:
Yes the volume is on maximum.
Click to expand...

Ditto on mine. This is very bizarre, seems like some sort of latent (hardware?) defect as it is happening to more and more people. I originally suspected software as the speakers produce sound just fine on all other apps and the iPod, but after doing a full factory software restore I'm not sure.
 
Went to the Apple store today demonstrated the problem and 10 minutes later walked out with a new replacement phone.
 
We took my wife's iPhone 4 back to the Apple store last week for this same issue. She could hear just fine if she used it on speakerphone, but the sound kept going out on the ear piece. Restoring from backup didn't fix it, and the only thing that would temporarily fix it was inserting a headphone jack into the phone and adjusting the headphone volume. But the earpiece would lose sound again shortly thereafter. So we took it to the store, the associate said that he was able to reproduce it, and within 15 minutes, my wife had a new iPhone.
 
Same issue - no sound

My wife just received her iPhone 4 today. Phone worked fine at first but now no sound from ear piece and speaker. As you say... headphones work. On the phone with an Apple technician right now. Asking me to plug into iTunes... but I am having to update iTunes and backup the phone...
***update*** Restore didn't work. Phone needs to be replaced.
 
me too

I just opened my iphone about 2 hours ago and after sync and all that, no sound from the earpiece. Nice. Sending the wife to the apple store tomorrow.
 
Same thing happened to my wife's iP4. We were going to call Apple today, until it started working again - 4 days later...?!?
 
anyone else notice things disappearing from their iphone IE ringtones! My wife and I bought our phones on the same day same time and all synced up the same and mine has the earpiece problem and I noticed ringtones that i used to have on my phone that are not there so I checked my wifes phone and she has them on hers! (remember both synced the same) so I dont know just throwing it out there!

Please post fix! Have tried the in/out with headphones and reset nothing! I really dont want to drive 3 hours to take this to a store for them to give me a hassle! :mad:
 
I had the same problem with my phone's earpiece two days ago. I did a restore from backup yesterday, which seemed to fix it temporarily. However, a couple of hours later, the speaker dropped out again in the middle of a call.

I left the phone on the table overnight and was just about to take it to the t-mobile store for repair/replacement when I checked again and, behold, the speaker is working again as if nothing had happened. I'm wondering how long it will last.

Btw. this is my third iPhone 4 unit in five months. The first one had a broken home button, the second one had to be replaced because I dropped it from waist level onto a carpet, shattering the glass back. Now the capricious earpeace. My 3g lasted more than two years without any quirks (although I dropped it on a weekly basis :eek:). I hope the iPhone 5 will be as great as the iPhone 4 and as robust as the 3G.
 
What I did to fix it

Okay so what I did to fix the problem on the iPhone 4 when I couldnt get any sound from the earpiece speaker was this..

1) checked that the volume went up and down on the phone.
It did
As I did this I noticed the volume symbol going up and down on the screen said "Volume (Head Phones)" I didnt have the head phone in....

So the phone thinks I have the head phones in... explains why I cant hear anything when I put the phone up to my ear, the sound has been divered away from the internal earpeice speaker to the head phones (Well thats how it would work in my simple non electronic mechanical thinking way)

I tried turning the phone off and on... no change...

Okay what I am about to tell you next wont appear in any "How to fix your iPhone" Manual

With the iPhone on, I pushed a toothpick into the head phone socket. (A wooden tooth pick) and went up and down in the volume button. I jiggled the tooth pick around without much success... Then I scrapped the bottom of the head phone socket hole... and gave it a little soft push... up and down on the volume.... and what do you know... the word "Head Phones" was gone from the screen... phone started working again.

How long ago did I do this?... About 3 minutes ago. I was so excited that I might be able to help some one I got on and registered to let you know.
 
Fix? Maybe?

I don't know if anyone has noticed this but on the sound controls (+, -, and retangular button) there are actually two positions on the rectangular button. Seems as though you can set to "mute" with that thing.

Worked for me. Simple as pie. :D
 
Easy fix for loss of sound on iPhone 4

My iPhone 4 lost sound for certain functions, like playing music through the speaker, listening to a phone call through the ear speaker, and hearing the various function sounds played through the external speaker.

I found this article on Apple's Support page that gave me the diagnostic step I needed to try (see Step 2 under heading "Resolution"): http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1630. "While on the Home screen, adjust the volume buttons. If you see the icon below, indicating that headphones are attached, there may be debris or an object lodged in the headset jack"

My iPhone showed that the headphones were selected... so there was something in the jack. I didn't want to try digging it out, because it would likely get jammed in there. So, I got the vacuum cleaner, hooked up the hose, turned the iPhone jack upside down, and sucked the debris out in a second's time.

Presto! The iPhone worked perfectly again. Try it if you're having a similar problem. Good luck!
 
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