Q: Iphone 4s iOs 6 Sound issue-

I had a similar intermittant loud speaker problem on a brand new iPhone 4 8GB. Upgraded to iOS 6, OTA via WiFi.  Not sure if it happened immediately or after a few days, the phone inbuilt large speakers no longer made any sound.  No Notifications, ring tone or alarm sounds or handfree loudspeaker calls.  Tried giving the mute button a good toggle but didn't help. Headset worked ok!, incall earpierce worked ok. Tried to change ring tone to force the sample sound to play but it would not. The phone vibrated but no sound. Sometimes ( <1% of the time) it did briefly for a half second play the sound but then when quiet again.

After reading discussions above, I connected phone to itunes, and downloaded a song. Played the song on the phone and it played via loud speker ok. Now all the notifications, alarms, ring tones and notifications work without fault. (1 day since.)  I feel it's not a hardware fault but a software / setting bug.

Settings-> Music-> Sound Check, is Off. It seemed to be working ok before I had a chance, changing this setting to fix it.

Thanks, Andrew.

Since downloading IOS 6 to my 4S phone doesn't ring at all only vibrates, no audible text messages either.  I downloaded a ringtone to see if it would make a difference, it went directly into voicemail, which is obviously worse.  Pretty bad when your phone doesn't ring at all.  I did a reset and restore which provided nothing but a waste of my time.  I want to downgrade to 5.1.1 but am afraid to do it since it isn't supported by Apple.

Since updating to iOS 6 Sept 19th (I used iTunes) I have had continuous problems with no sound. If I turned the phone off (which it didn't stay off, it would automatically power itself back on in seconds), put it on the charger, or sometimes doing nothing I'd lose my notification sounds for up to an hour at a time. No text tones, alert tones, keyboard clicks, ect. Restored it. Did a master reset. I did everything. Even tried the "dock" thing. Nothing worked. The only way my sounds would come back is if I left the phone alone for 20+ minutes.

So, I went into an apple store yesterday. Initially they considered it a "software" issue and tried to do a "clean restore". Brought the phone back to me and guess what. No sound. The up/down volume buttons on the side of the phone didn't work they only displayed the little bell (no volume bar). At this point he said that it was a "speaker" issue. So the first option for this was to swap out the phone under warranty. I have my replacement iPhone 4s and it works perfectly fine. It shuts off, sound works with no problems.

I advise anyone with this problem take their phone into apple or send it in to get it looked at if the docking doesn't work for you. I don't know why, or what happened to my device but it happened AFTER I updated to iOS 6. Apple of course said that they were having these speaker problems before iOS 6 update rolled out but I stand firm---my phone was fine before the update.

Hope this helps some of you.

I too have these problems (well, my wife's iPhone 4 does) and I know they started with the iOS 6 update too. 

Hopefully this bug makes it to the list of things Apple is working on.  Unfortunately, because this doesn't seem to be a universal problem, I fear this will fall under their radar.  I encourage everyone with the problem to submit a bug report so Apple can gauge how widespread the issue is.

At the very least, LuLuBabii23's iPhone might make it's way back to some engineer at Apple to help figure this out.  One can hope.

Just wanted to go on record that my iphone4s is having all of these previous complaints about losing sound. I first noticed the sound issue while playing words for friends & draw something. I of course checked & double checked my settings everywhere. This morning I noticed when I plugged my phone to charge it that the sound it makes on contact did not work.The phone ring is not working either. The only thing that I haven't done is reset or restore (that scares me & I won't do it. ) I hope these complaints will get some answers. If not, I will get help from Verizon, not sure where an apple dealer is around my area.Sad to say my phone is out of warranty & I didnot purchase insurance. 

My story seems to be opposite many of these posts. Since the IOS6 upgrade to my working 4S with good battery life, after a couple of days, the phone stopped playing the ring tone. It only vibrates for an incoming call. All other audio and sounds work fine, along with the volume buttons. I then reloaded my phone as brand new, and it worked again. But this time it only lasted a few hours before breaking.  Apple care says its my hardware??? Sure, whatever. It's their expense to FedEx me a new one. I am sure I am the only one with this problem and its only my hardware?

Sheesh-Android looking better every day.

I reset my phone-I turned my phone complete off (by hold down the sleep button and then home and hold)  This fixed my volume levels.  Now if it stays fixed, that remains to be seen.

I have the exactly same issue on my iPhone 4s.

I upgraded to iOS 6 the first day it was released and this problem came.

This issue makes my iPhone nothing but a non-sound game machine. Because a phone without sound cannot do nothing!!!!

This is a VERY severe problem and I want to know when Apple could fix it. This is really frustrating!!!

I'm having the same problem as you describe with volume issues. For me (so far) it's only on text messages. My volume is on full but the tone is so quiet! Having said that I think the ringtone volume level is also quieter and all this has been since I upgraded via my phone. So frustrating, does anyone know how to fix this and are you Apple even aware of this problem and are you working on a fix?!

Apple support told me they are NOT working my ringer issue and that there is not a known issue in this regard. That is why they are replacing my phone. I can say that sometimes the phone will ring. The weird part for me is that the same caller may ring one time, then not the next. All the while all the other sounds (key click, text,music,video Etc) work just fine. One thing I did just notice is it seems the upgrade jacked my contact list up a bit. I now see several contacts listed multiple times. I tried cleaning those up as a possible explanation for my issue, but it changed nothing. I'll let you know what happens when the new phone shows up Monday.

I seem to have the same problem,  No sound on videos, or Pandora, or keyboard clicks through iPhone speakers. Sounds work in headphones or in a friend's dock.  I tried the fix mentioned by DigitalSciGuy, however, the phone still has not regained its sounds for more than a few seconds upon removal from the dock and never after a reboot or a hard reset.  I'm now in the process of downloading the latest itunes to see if a backup and restore will resolve the issue. 

I first noticed this after a trip to San Diego where i used the clock radio docking station in the W hotel.  I do not normally use a dock at home, I usually have another device that plays Pandora at home, but on vacation I thought I'd listen via my phone in the hotel room.  I guess this was my big mistake.

I just had the same problem. Exactly what all the others described. I have an iphone 4s and I started using ios 6 like a week back. I was playing CSR RACING, pressed the home button, and when I went back to the game there was no sound. I locked the phone and the lock sound isnt there, nor the keyboard clicks, and videos are muted too. I inserted the headphones and the sound was there. Did everything that everyone else tried above. PLEASE HELP!

I just restored the phone to factory settings, reinstalled ios 6, still no sound!!!!!!

I had the issue where my sound was not working for notifications, etc.  Sadly, it dawned on me that I had turned the volume down all the way on Angry Birds.  This had never affected all of my other notifications before iOS6.  So, I just went into Angry Birds, turned the volume back up, and Voila.  All of my sounds are audible again.  Ugh.  So, my advice to people with sound issues is to go into an app that uses sound and turn the volume up while in the app.  Not sure if my game volume taking out the rest of my notifications (but not ringer, alarm, etc) is unique, but it was certainly my issue.

Settings-General-Restore-Restore All Setiings. It worked FOR ME