The iPhone ringer volume lowers to zero by itself.

Here some updates after a bit of testing:

• as I wrote before, “change ringer volume with buttons” is off and the physical switch for silent mode is set on “sounding” (pushed on the right). The only way for me to see the ringer volume level is by going into the “Sound and Haptics” page and check if it’s silenced. I am being obsessed by this issue at the moment and I am constantly checking the volume. It keeps the level saved for some minutes, then it goes to zero;
• removing the (third party) cover doesn’t resolve the issue, it’s not a matter of button pressed because the ringer volume slide is not appearing;
• ”Attention Alert” is off;
• ”Do Not Disturb” is off;
• stopping clearing Safari cache and chronology doesn’t halt the problem;
• it happens even just after watching a video on YouTube;
• it happens after some time I set the volume back to his original level, it can be after 15 minutes or more. Using or leaving the iPhone on the desk doesn’t change the outcome;
• blocking and unblocking the phone refreshes the “Sound and Haptics” page and brings again the ringers volume to the level I set it before (50%);
• exiting and entering in “Sound and Haptics” also brings back the volume from zero to the previously saved sound volume;
• plugging or unplugging the charger doesn’t affect anything, the ringer volume goes down to zero by its own in the settings anyways;
• multimedia volume (the only setting that my volume buttons controls) isn’t affected and it stays at the last level I set it. It’s just the ringer volume that has the problem of setting to zero all by itself.

Here’s the latest update: two days ago I tried to reset the iPhone preferences using the Settings>Reset>Reset All Settings command (and then disable “Attention Aware”).

My iPhone XR kept the ringer’s volume settings until about an hour ago (I was frequently checking the volume slide in the Settings>Sounds and Haptics page these last few days) but now it came back to the lowest level, effectively muting the ringer. The problem is still there.

I didn’t put in charge the phone in the meantime, because I wanted to exclude any possible Lightning port issue as the origin for my problem. And to exclude any other kind of physical problems, I left my iPhone on my desk without any cover and never put it in my pockets (I am using another non-Apple smartphone for my everyday needs at the moment, I am using the iPhone XR just for testing).

In the meantime between my last two checks, I used Safari and deleted the chronology using the command Settings>Safari>Clear History and Website Data, as I always do as a habit. It shouldn’t affect the ringer’s volume, but since I’m doing this as a test, I will try to reset the smartphone again and to avoid to delete the chronology to see what happens.

If this still doesn’t resolve the problem, I will try to delete all the content in my iPhone and reset it to factory settings and wait. If the ringer issue happens again, I will try to use another account. If this happens again, I’ll wait for the next iOS update (at the moment I’m running the latest one: 14.1), hopefully not too much time. Hopefully...

I will update this thread after those tests and if I discover a way to avoid that my iPhone lowers the volume ringer settings to zero.

After the update to iOS 14.2 I didn’t notice any changes in the ringer’s volume level. I am using my iPhone XR a lot less these days after I swapped the SIM card with another phone of mine, but since there have been changes in the “Sound and Haptics” page, probably the Apple programmers did actually fix some bugs... But I can’t be sure of this, I’m just guessing. So I will keep to check the volume in the next weeks.

Last update about the issue.

I started thinking it was a problem caused by my free iCloud drive almost full, in a scenery where it failed to update the sound settings but it still downloaded a previous setting with the ringer set to the lowest level. So I payed for a 50 GB upgrade and waited.

Yesterday, for the entire day, the sound volume kept at the desired level.

Today I lost an important call because the iPhone didn’t rang (or rang at the lowest possible level... And without vibration too).

So, the problem isn’t caused by iCloud.

It’s like the “do not disturb” mode is kicking in for some reason. I can’t think of this bug as anything different than a software bug.

I can’t wait for an iOS update to fix this severe bug so I am buying another phone, a cheap one, for the moment. But the truth is that I can’t resell this iPhone XR to anyone, because it would be a fraud. I can only bring it in an Apple Store for a trade in, losing a lot of money. Thanks Apple: premium prices for faulted devices (by a software update. I hope it’s not a marketing strategy...).

Another update: in the last five days the ringer’s volume has been kept at its desired level. But keep in mind that I removed the SIM card a week ago and I am not receiving calls or texts any more. Now I am installing iOS 14.2 and I will do another batch of tests on my iPhone XR before asking the customer service for an eventual hardware repair.