iPhone 12 Pro Lock Sound Issue

Installing 14.2 fixed the issue. Then I put it on my Magsafe Charger and it came back. Definitely seems like an OS issue related to Magsafe.

MagSafe connection helps to reproduce Lock sound distortion on demand with any iPhone 12 unit.

Agreed on how annoying it is. Same issue for me on the iPhone 12 Pro. The music playback test worked the same for me. Powering the phone off, and back on also temporarily changed the lock sound back to normal. Whatever causes this definitely seems to be related to audio playback. I also noticed the issue returns after some other system sounds (i.e. MagSafe, Charging, etc.).

updating to 14.2.1 did not fix the issue at all. I am still having notification issues of all kinds, including keyboard and lock screen.

I have also found that the sound issues are not limited to the keyboard and to the lock screen. It also happens in any of the system sounds including text messaging notifications and mail notifications. I have found that if I go in to the settings and change the sounds to something different the volume will return to a normal sound volume. But only until my phone goes to sleep. After that the sound issue returns almost immediately.

however when I go to play audio such as through the music app, the volume is strong and stays that way. So it is obviously a software issue.

It seems that many of you are frustrated by this, so think of your options, try not to be consumed by this sound issue.

1. If your phone is less than 14 days old then take is back to Apple for an exchange (or refund if you'd prefer);
2. Buy an iPhone 11 if you can get a refund, as the sound issue only appears to be unique to the 12;
3. Speak to someone at the genius bar and see if they can determine what the problem is;
4. Wait for the next ios update, hopefully that will resolve it.

Don't let this consume you, its a first world problem really - there's many who can't afford a 12, so if you are fortunate enough to have one, then you ain't doing too bad in life.

Admittedly it is a bit of a pain to reset/restore but so far I don’t have the annoying lock noise

That fits with my experience but with the MagSafe case instead of the MagSafe charger (I don’t have the charger), the faulty lock noise only came back when I removed from the case and reinserted it

I agree.

for the time being, just disable the lock sound in settings. I’ll just enable it after the next update to check if it’s fixed.

Yes a reset and restore fixed the issue, I don’t have the MagSafe charger but I do have the MagSafe case, I have just removed it from case and put it back in and now the faulty lock noise has returned... Doh! I will go back to Apple support and update my case with them.

Wonder if the magnets in the tiny speakers are affected by the MagSafe magnet? That’d be a big oversight if so. Still doesn’t explain a few things (like why other audio isn’t affected) but makes me think this might be more of a hardware issue than software.

Case or no case it does not matter. I have had 2 different 12 Pros that do the same thing. Case, MagSafe....IT DOESN’T MATTER. There is also no workaround. You can hard rest all you want. It will come back. Reset, comes back, don’t ever use a MagSafe, still have the issue. My case isn’t a MagSafe case and it still does it. Again I've never used ANY MagSafe product and it happens. The moment I started up the phone out of the box it was an issue and I hadn’t even used a case yet.

I’ve contacted apple support because I have the same problem. Even when play some music it disappears, but when I put it on the MagSafe charger starts all over again. They said I needed to turn off the sound when you lock the phone on settings, reboot it and turn them on again and that should solve the problem, surprisingly it didn’t, and the last thing they told me it was a software related issue that probably with iOS 14.3 would be fixed, but by reading more comments on this post and think it may be not.

Here is my and another Reddit discussion about the audio problems.

https://reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/jjrvzz/iphone_12_speaker_echoeytinny/

https://reddit.com/r/iphonehelp/comments/kkyttv/iphone_12_mini_internal_speaker_sound_problems/

My theory is some psycho acoustic trick / effect to give a “bigger” sound from the tiny speaker that goes haywire.

IMHO the strange audio effect is linked to the keyboard sound / Lock Screen sound problem.

@FabioM08 I bought it from the Amazon Apple Store. I just had a chat with the support and that’s it. I’m from Germany and during the first 30 days one can hand devices back to the seller if one has any kind of problem with them.

“Apple is aware of this issue and it is not fixed in iOS 14.3.”

It amazes me that despite months of beta testing software (iOS 14) and years of beta testing hardware (MagSafe) that Apple would NOT come by this issue in tests. 🤯