Unlocked iPhone sound system stopped working

Very annoying. Today I took two phones out with me. Busy day. Lots of meetings, first day back and what not.

I took out my fancy unlocked iPhone and my o2 Blackberry.

The Blackberry is email/data only £10/month. The phone doesn’t work. I didn’t want yet another phone number to deal with.

All was good until I answered a phone call in the early afternoon and couldn’t hear the other person. I then realised that no sound *whatsoever* was coming from the device. They, interestingly, could hear me. No sound, no music, no video, no alarm sound, no *phone* audio. Deary me.

That screwed me.

First day back and I had lots of calls to make and receive. SMS Text News reader Gaylene, from Hill & Knowlton, was a bit confused. I’d been trying to meet her but she was wondering why, every time she called, I didn’t answer and texted back. I ended up having to type an enormously embarrassing “hi, my iPhone’s audio has just stopped working, so, er, could you text me?” explanatory message.

Deeply, deeply unimpressed. Couldn’t use the Blackberry to call anyone, obviously. So I spent the whole afternoon texting. And surfing at the speed of slow. There is, perhaps, nothing worse than sitting using an iPhone fandabbydosey (“good”) browser next to a chap on a boring but 3G Samsung — and note that he’s getting better browsing speeds.

It is a seeeerious let down, the data speed. It’s even more annoying when you can’t use the handset’s primary function — voice.

Reflashed it with 1.1.3 and unlocked it again with ZiPhone and piff, paff, poof, the device is fine. But my confidence in Apple is chipped, ever so, ever so, ever so slightly chipped. How annoying. I hope it doesn’t happen again.

This experience, by the way, combined with a few other experiences today, pushed me into a Vodafone shop…

About Ewan

Ewan is Founder and Editor of Mobile Industry Review. He writes about a wide variety of industry issues and is usually active on Twitter most days. You can read more about him or reach him with these details.
  • Chris

    That’s happened to me too. You don’t need to restore everything though – The problem is that the iPhone thinks that the headphones/headset are still attached, and therefore disables the handset speaker. It most often happens if you’re using non-Apple headphones.

    The solution, rather primitively, is to reattach the headphones, pushing the jack in quite firmly, and then pull it out again. Repeat until you get your sound back.

    Clumsy I know – and one would expect better of apple. But I’ve had almost exactly the same thing happen on a Sony Ericsson too (although it had a way to manually override it).

  • http://www.topmobile20.com Jeb

    Ewan, just carry your N95 with Joiku on it. That and always carry a spare cell on important days.

  • http://www.i2sms.com Giff Gfroerer, i2SMS

    Hey,

    I bet your SMS still worked. A great plug for SMSTextNews!

    Seems like a great lead in to the wonderful uses of SMS. Like when your Blackberry goes down, guess what? Your SMS still works! Or in times of emergencies when the cell towers are all jammed up and you can’t get a call out…yup, SMS still works!

    We need to remember more that SMS is there to help us in times of trouble on the network…

  • Pat

    Thanks Chris!

    I actually tried that initially, to no avail. I continued plugging and unplugging and after 10 or so times it worked and the sound came back. I didn’t expect this from my iPhone… maybe because it’s unlocked.

  • Sam

    Hi, I have the exact same problem.
    I wonder, was there any application you installed recently before this error occurred? Or any activity that may have triggered it?
    I'd like to find an alternative to restoring the phone in order to fix this problem.

    Thanks,
    Sam

  • Junaid

    hey sam ,

    i have the same problem just as u do with my iphone , no audio out i cant listen to any ringtones , no music , no speaker … it seems u had this problem 3 months ago , hoping that u must have got it rectified. Please let me know the solution for this , My iphone version is 1.1.4

  • http://www.mobileindustryreview.com smstextnews

    I'm afraid not, Junaid… it just stopped working and there I left it!

    2008/8/25 Disqus <>

  • kit

    yeah, i have d same problem. how did u fix it?

  • Patrick

    OK… I had the same problem. It simply comes from the headphone plug. For some reason when you are listenning to music and unplug the headphones the iphone thinks that they are still on and continue to react as if.
    Try to plug and unplug various time. That's what I did and it worked!

    cheers

  • Patrick

    OK… I had the same problem. It simply comes from the headphone plug. For some reason when you are listenning to music and unplug the headphones the iphone thinks that they are still on and continue to react as if.
    Try to plug and unplug various time. That's what I did and it worked!

    cheers

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