iPhone doesn't always remember my place in an audiobook

Agreed! I too am having this issue. Very hard to keep up with a book when i have to remember chapter and location.

I haven't used audiobooks, so I don't know how they differ from music. But I have found that it doesn't always remember where I am in a song. I think what is happening is the iPod function is crashing when you are doing other things and you just don't realize it because you aren't listening to it. Then you come back later and there is no "now playing" link and it doesn't remember where you were. I wonder if it remembers your place like a movie though. If you click "done" before you go back to the home screen it might remember where you were?

Yes, I hope this is fixed soon. iPods used to do this too, periodically. They fixed that a few months ago and it's frustrating to be running into the same issue on the iPhone.

I haven't figured out what triggers it - pause and auto-poweroff? Pause and power?

Anyway, it's quite frequent and very irritating.

On your audiobooks in iTunes, for Windows, right click then "get info". On a Mac, ctrl-click, then "get info". Once in the "get info" window for the audiobook file, go to options & make "remember playback position" is checked toward the bottom half of the "options" window. Hope this helps.

Audiobooks seem to come with that field already checked.

I too seem to have my audiobook lose it's place. Quite a pain.

It depends on the source of the audiobook file. I download from audible.com & yes, they're bookmarked. If you are ripping them in to iTunes from a set of CD's, I pretty sure you have to bookmark them yourself.

Actually, I think I have this same problem with Audible content... I had Snowcrash (a must read if you haven't, BTW) downloaded from Audible.com, purchased through them, and when I play it on iPhone it seems to remember the last place I was about 75% of the time.

I haven't determined the pattern of when it does/doesn't; it's not all the time but enough to def be annoying. BUT what's interesting is that iPod player on iPhone actually DOES seem to know where you left off ALL the time, just that about 25% of the time it resets after re-opening the audiobook file.

My workaround: before going into iPod player on iPhone, I get ready to mentally note the chapter that is about to be displayed at the upper-right because, as noted above, the iPod player always displays the right resume point (even if it's about to reset). Then when I actually launch the iPod app, I make a quite note of that chapter; if this happens to be one of the 25% of the time it resets to the beginning, at least I know what chapter to go back into manually to resume.

Narrowed down the prob on my iPhone... seems to loose its place when switching between two audiobooks, but not when switching between an audiobook and song/playlist.

Same here, but not between switching audiobooks because I only have one on the iPhone at a time.

And yes, Snowcrash is a great read/listen. Eragon and Eldest are my latest listens.

Also having this problem. I also have an Ipod nano and it has always worked fine; not so on the IPhone.

Take a look at my answer here. Maybe it is the correct solution for you.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1065979&tstart=0

Ok, this issue has been getting to me, but I have found:

a) a way to duplicate the problem every time
b) a workaround

Here goes...

a) The way you can duplicate the problem every time is to listen to something other than your audiobook (music, for example), and then either let the phone go to sleep or click the top button to put it to sleep yourself. Now wake it up and go straight to your audiobook and play it. It will start from the beginning of the file everytime.

Notice that when you wake the phone after having listening to music, if you go straight to the audiobook and play it, but in portrait mode tap the screen once quickly after you begin playing, you'll notice the progress bar is where it is supposed to be, but then immediately jumps to the beginning of the file. So it's not forgetting your place exactly.. it does remember it, but something is causing it to jump back to the beginning of the file anyway.

I think when it wakes back up after you listened to music the last time you had your phone on, some flag or something that tells it whether it's a file that needs to be continued from the current location or reset to the beginning is still stuck on your previous music file.

sooo....

b) workaround. you simply reset this "flag" by playing a music song prior to listening to your audiobook. So you wake your phone up, and instead of going straight to your audiobook, just go to some music, play it for a second or two, then go to your audiobook. It will play fine and pick up right where you left off. I think what's happening here is that when you play the song first, even though the flag was stuck from before your phone went to sleep, it doesn't matter, since it probably gets re-initialized after you start playing your song after you wake the phone up. Then you move on to your audiobook and the flag is set properly this time.

I know this sounds all confusing, and I may not have the "why's" absolutely correct, but the basics are sound. Simply play a song first, then move on to your audiobook after waking your phone, and you're fine.

Also, if the last thing you listened to before your phone went to sleep WAS the audiobook, you can just go straight back to the audiobook, and it's fine.

So for everyone having these seemingly random issues, try to duplicate it as I descriped in "a)" and then try the workaround in "b)" and let me know how it goes.

If this seems like what's happening, maybe it'll finally get fixed in the next software update.

Carl

I have tried this procedure several times, and it seems to work. Good work!

I verified your steps to reproduce the problem and your workaround on my iPhone. That's a great job of troubleshooting! Thanks for posting your results. The workaround will keep me going until hopefully Apple fixes the problem.

Thanks again!