iPhone 6 Help! Sudden drop in phone volume

In My Humble Opinion
1

Thread title says it all. I’ve had the phone over a year and it has been great. A few days ago, the volume of phone calls dropped significantly, with no clear event triggering it. Now I can’t use it for phone calls unless I use an earpiece.

I Googled and this appears to be a Thing, but I am not seeing any obvious fixes. I tried rebooting a few times, turning off phone noise cancellation and accepted the OS upgrade I just received. No better.

Argh. I am away, so guess I will take it to the Apple Store when I am back, but it is frustrating as all heck.

Any ideas?

2

Out of curiosity, what happens when you put it on speaker phone?

3

Just tried it. Decent volume.

ETA: I also tried rubbing my fingernail into the 3/8" slot where I think the phone ear speaker is. It does not appear to have crud in it or anything like that.

4

You can make an appointment at the “Genius Bar” at your local Apple store, and they’ll diagnose your problem for no charge. I’ve used that service a couple times, and it’s generally been pretty good.

5

Yes, thank you. Planning to do that when I get home. Hoping there was some obvious setting change or other “reset the phone this way” type of fix.

6

What happens when, while you are on a call, you adjust the volume? Does the onscreen volume indicator change at all as you adjust the loudness?

7

Yes it changes, but I have it max’d since it is so faint.

8

With no headphones plugged in, does it say “Ringer” or “Headphones?”

If it says “Headphones” when there are no headphones plugged in it probably means something inside the headphone jack is tricking it into thinking there are connected headphones. A shot of some compressed air might clean it out.

Also, if you have Bluetooth turned on, try turning it off and see if that works.

9

Thanks for the ideas. I checked and it says Ringer. And I turned off BTooth - no change. Argh.

10

Is it the same when listening to a different audio source, like music?

11

When I play a YouTube video, the music comes out the lower speaker by the charger jack and is plenty/typically loud.

12

Some Hail Marys for you-

Go to Settings > Accessibility > Call Audio Routing. Is it set to “Automatic?”

Under “Hearing,” are the settings for “Hearing Devices” and “TTY” set to off/not selected?

This probably shouldn’t have anything to do with it, but flick the ringer/silent switch on and off and back to ringer.

Do you have “Lock Sound” set to on? If not, turn it on in Settings > Sounds and restart.

13

I have checked all of these and they appear fine. Thank you for trying!

I am getting home tomorrow and I guess I will show up at The Genius Bar first thing Saturday. If they figure anything out I will report back. Grrr - frustrating.

14

Same thing happened to my wife’s phone. The change seemed to be permanent. Eventually we just replaced it.

15

Argh!! If the Geniuses report that to be the case, I will demand a replacement (he says huffily).

16

Do you have an appointment? Your store might not be as busy as the one near my house, but when I did the “just show up” thing a few years ago, the wait was about 2 hours. Fortunately, I live very close, so I had them call me when my time was up.

They likely won’t replace your phone unless it’s under warranty. But many phone plans get you a free* upgrade every few years.

*My last “free” upgrade ended up costing several hundred dollars, all said and done.

17

I will figure that out. My kids have taken things to the store and are telling me that showing up works, but we’ll see.

18

Update: the receiver for the phone ear speaker stopped working. They tried replacing just that, but ended up replacing the whole display and it’s back to full functions

It was quick - I showed up to be 3rd in line, noted my problem, they ran a diagnostic and said “yep, it’s this; we’ll try A then B” and took my phone to the back. About 30 minutes later they came out, told me it was B, and I was all set. Had to pay because it was past warranty.

Interesting aside: I set up a fingerprint passcode which got lost during the work. I wonder if it’s because they swapped out the whole display?