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Iphone 3G Randomly pauses music

I just bought a black 16 gig 3G iPhone to replaced my original 8 gig iPhone that worked flawlessly.

So after I copied my backup files, and did a sync I started to have my music pause during playback in my car. At first I thought my mp3's were bad. But I cleared the phone of all songs and it started happening again.

Hmm. I search the internet and see others are having the same problem. Some people say that replacing the phone with a new one fixes it.

Well I bring it in, and the Genius says that I should try a full restore. So I do a full restore and it still pauses songs randomly during playback.

I bring the phone back and they give me a replacement phone.

Go home put everything on the new phone and I still have this problem. So I decide I should test the lineout of the iphone to another device other than my car. I then hook it up to some bose speakers that I have. ****. Still pausing the iPhone at random.

I try multiple cables bought from the apple store. Still happening. So I then go back into the Apple store for the 3rd Iphone replacement.

Sure enough, it is still randomly pausing songs. So I restore the phone again, and this time I don't back up using anything from my existing iPhones. I only sync songs over, and manually load applications back on.

Well that didn't do anything at all. So here I am with a iPhone that Randomly pauses my music. So while I drive I have to look down, unlock, and resume playback. Sometimes 5 times in 30 seconds. It is very annoying.

The music files are not corrupt, and they play back fine on my original iPhone which is a non 3G. One of the supervising mac genius people became very rude to me knowing that this is the third time I have replaced a brand new phone.

So does anyone know why this is happening? Are all 3G's faulty? Is this new 3G iPhone outputjack bad on all models? Why does everyone at the apple store play dumb like this is all new to them?

One thing I notice is that if i have no music playing, but the iPhones plugged into the stereo, I can hear a random burst of noise coming from the output of the iphone. I am thinking that has something to do with the pausing. But why would I have this happen on 3 different phones, on multiple devices, with all kinds of different stereo headphone cables?

Please help

Thanks

MBP 17inch Core Dou 2, Mac OS X (10.5)

Posted on Sep 13, 2008 9:32 PM

36 replies

Dec 18, 2008 8:14 AM in response to HeavySausage

I have this issue as well, but noticed it only occurs when headphones are plugged in (still testing 2 wire vs 3 wire) and when the screen is on. I am able to suppress this issue when I'm playing music and I turn the display OFF (with the top button). I also see no correlation between this issue and sound volume. Can everyone else work around the problem (for audio) by turning their displays off (obviously this wont help for video playback though...).

Dec 22, 2008 10:54 PM in response to drock3800

finished testing - no issues with the 3-wire headphones. Anyone else had any luck narrowing this down?

Dec 22, 2008 11:11 PM in response to HeavySausage

I've opened ticket 6464672 at bugreport.apple.com. Hopefully this will help get some apple engineers to look at this issue.

IanL219

Level 1

0 points

Jan 15, 2009 3:16 PM in response to HeavySausage

Same problem here. I've tried the stock ear buds, high quality Sony headphones, old iPod nano earbuds, a stereo miniplug to RCA conversion cable, etc, etc. I've tried with and without connection to power. I've tried resetting the iPhone with headphones plugged in, unplugged, 2 times in a row, etc. I've tried playing songs at 10-90% of volume and everywhere in between. I've tried to play songs I bought from iTunes, and songs I've ripped from CD's. I've even tried threatening my iPhone and cursing at it repeatedly, and gone as far as to hold it over the toilet while presenting an ultimatum. You guessed it; still pausing during music playback.

This problem is so annoying that I no longer consider my iPhone to be a music player of any sort. These problems combined with its recurring inability to handle phone calls reliably makes me thing I really just have an iPod touch stuffed into the wrong case type.

Since there doesn't appear to be any universal fix to this issue based on so many comments from others, I have decided to go back to my old iPod nano for my music playback... SO ANNOYING! Perhaps we should persuade that DB John Mayer to get an iPhone and report this trouble with it so that Apple actually responds and takes care of it!

HHHENNS

Level 1

0 points

Jan 15, 2009 7:38 PM in response to HeavySausage

Wow. I never knew that so many other people were having this problem. I have noticed that it happens the most often with metal bands, and also i have had the problem of it changing the song randomly too. This is very annoying and apple might want to fix it especially when all of them that they redistribute to people are STILL having this probleam...

Rino

Level 1

10 points

Feb 7, 2009 10:12 AM in response to HeavySausage

Add mine to the list. I'm using Apple's in-ear earbuds. No problems until yesterday. I was listening to a lecture from iTunesU while riding a stationary bike. The **** thing kept pausing at random intervals. I thought it might be sweat in the mic. Or maybe the iPhone doesn't like Thomas L. Friedman. It worked flawlessly the last several times I used it at the gym. It also works in my car with a cassette insert.

NikiOnly

Level 1

0 points

Feb 19, 2009 1:29 PM in response to HeavySausage

I don't get that there are so many people out there with this same issue without a fix yet. I haven't dropped my phone once or have had any enough moisture around my phone it effect circuitry. I do work out with it but usually have it PLACED aside unless on the treadmill. This problem is so bad I've registered to fix it.

what kind of support is this? This phone is great other than this one malfunction.

Feb 24, 2009 8:37 AM in response to NikiOnly

I had the same problem ever since I bought my 3G 16gb back in Dec '08. I just purchased an iPhone headphone adapter (that has 3 stripes) and have not had the problem since. I can use my Sony "el-cheap-o" headphones as well as my cassette adapter for the car. It's been going strong for two weeks now with the 5 gigs of music and video that I've loaded on the phone far.

<frustration>
For me, it's not so much that the problem exists, it's the deaf ear that the company seems to show with this problem. C'mon, no problem with the iPhone 3G headphones, but my iPod 80g Classic headphones don't work. What's up with that? I mean, exactly how short was the testing phase?

Thanks (CR)APPLE.
</frustration>

Again, no problems since purchasing the adapter from r@dioh sh@ck.

NikiOnly

Level 1

0 points

Feb 24, 2009 8:29 PM in response to stepshows_com

dude even with stock 3 stripe headphones I have this issue. I'm not using a 3rd party headset or older generation ipod headsets.

today i had my itunes skip 27 times within a minute.

Feb 25, 2009 1:56 PM in response to NikiOnly

Add another one to the list of those with the same symptoms with music pausing during playback. Funny, without knowing the cause, I determined it had something to do with the headphone jack and which headset/earbuds were plugged into the jack. I found I could mess around with the plug and cause the music to pause. It definitely has something to do with the plug touching something in the jack the causes the pause. Can't wait for a solution to this. Its very irritating.

Aaronlh

Level 1

20 points

Mar 5, 2009 8:07 AM in response to iphone3483

I've had this problem since the 3G came out. I've filed a bug report with Apple as well: 6649442. If I hear anything, I will be sure to post to this thread.

Apr 21, 2009 11:39 AM in response to Aaronlh

And another with the same problem. Does anyone at apple track these forums? Do we have any idea whether this is being worked on?

It was a weird kind of relief to discover I'm not the only one with the problem, followed quickly by surprise and disappointment that so many seem to be suffering with this problem, right across apple's range.

For my part, I think this renders the ipod part completely useless. I've had to give up trying to use it in the car as I was frequently tempted to try and restart the song whilst driving (really NOT a good idea). I also take my old nano with me when jogging, cycling or even commuting as the iphone is just too frustrating.

Having spent considerable time reading others' experiences and then experimented myself, I am convinced it is the auto-pause being activated when the iphone senses the headphones being 'unplugged'. In my case, volume did not appear to be a factor and I am pretty certain that rebooting, re-ripping, etc are only red herrings.

A solution? Nothing I can do myself, but an extra setting in the ipod section to switch off headphone monitoring, or even better, a five second delay after 'unplugging' to see if they reappear would solve the problem. Can this be over-ridden with a small app?

May 5, 2009 8:31 PM in response to HeavySausage

So I got my iPhone 3G about 3 weeks ago and just experienced this iTunes auto play/ auto pause thing. I've been listening to my music and watching videos both using the iPod function and YouTube and Pandora. All was well. Games worked fine. Audio paused for incoming calls. Today I was hanging out in a Star Bucks and went to the iTunes store where I downloaded some free audio book material. This was the only first that my iPhone experienced today. About 4 hours later I went to the gym which is where I began experiencing my iPhone stopping and starting and changing music tracks at will. Even if I press the power button and black out the screen. I thought maybe the heat from my body was somehow triggering the touch screen so I hit the power button and hid the home screen. I also turned the screen away from my body. I had the iPhone in my sweat shirt belly pocket and my sweat pants pocket. No change. This auto pausing and playing continued out in my car on the ride home. About 10 minutes or so later is was still happening so I shut it off. Right now I have it plugged into my G5 and I'm charging it. It is not auto playing or pausing or track changing or doing anything else weird. I thought it was heat or moisture. Anyway that's my two cents. Oh, my iPhone is a black 16GB at software version 2.2.1 I also held it in my hand screen up and watched it change so I know I wasn't accidentally hitting the screen.

May 12, 2009 9:55 PM in response to Eric Strausser

Just to let yall know, I took back my first iPhone 3G and my second one doesn't have a problem... Yet.

May 20, 2009 7:43 PM in response to HeavySausage

I have also have had this issue but not with the ear phone jack, my stereo in my car is an alpine deck but made for the i pods hooks up via usb for a couple of songs its fine then every once an a while it will pause even when airplane mode is on if anyone has a clue please respond. Thanks

Iphone 3G Randomly pauses music