Random volume drops on iPhone SE

So I've seen this question a few times, but maybe not my specific situation, which is that when I'm listening to music/podcasts through my iPhone speakers, the volume randomly drops. This is the part that is tricky to describe, the volume level drops, but not the volume bar. ie My phone is at max volume, the sound level drops to less than half that, but according to the phone it is still set at max volume. There is no way for me to adjust the sound louder again, as the phone has now made it so max volume is half as loud, and often times it will drop again after this to a barely perceptible level, all while the volume level itself, according to the phone, remains at max volume. When this occurs the volume stays lowered even if I switch to another app (music, podcasts, youtube, etc). The only way to regain the original max volume level seems to be to connect to something else (bluetooth speaker or ear pods) and then return to iPhone, or a restart. This occurs using the apple music app, the apple podcast app, and third party podcast apps. This only occurs when using the iPhone speaker, bluetooth speakers and air pods have never displayed this behavior. I've tried the oft mentioned solutions of:

• turning off "change with buttons" in Settings/Sounds & Haptics
• disabling "Attention Aware Features" in Settings/Face ID & Passcode (which sucks cause I actually like the attention aware features)
• restarting the iPhone (doing this does readjust the max volume to original levels, but its not a permanent solution and the volume drops continue to recur)

None have resolved the issue.

*note, the forum defaulted to tagging my post as iPhone SE, which is weird cause I don't think I've ever had an SE. My current phone is 12 and iOS is 17.03

[Re-Titled by Moderator]