Iphone 4s Volume Bar: Gone.

So ive been an Apple fan for as long as i can remember, from 2nd generation ipods all the way up to now, my iPhone 4s. But there seems to be one massive problem. The new iOS6 update has officially terminated my volume bar. The volume bar is completely missing and wont play any music off of the main speakers. Ive blown out all the ports with high pressure air, ive cleaned the dock port multiple times with unusued clean paint brush tips, to colgate toothbrushes. Theres no dust in either the dock port or the headphone jack. After a vigorous cleaning, i can unlock my phone only to see the volume bar for a maximum of 3 seconds, but as soon as i begin to play music or touch the volume it just ''disappears''. I hate to say it, but it almost seems like Apple planted some kind of bug or error in its new update so that im left to do nothing but expensively replace the entire unit, or upgrade to the god-like iPhone 5 that id rather not blow 500 worthless dollars on when my unit is basically the same apart from this new ''A6'' chip.. Ive had it for about a year and have never had any problems until iOS 6. Reason behind this is because the volume bar works just ''perfectly'' whenever its plugged into headphones, but as soon as i take them out of the jack, the volume bar houdini's on me and decides it doesnt want to come back.

And the most annoying part - Im a verizon customer and my phone was purchased at a Verizon Retail Store so it seems like this whole ''1-year warranty replacement'' that everyone else is enjoying from the Apple Store, wont be in my favor. Seems that at this point i have no way to fix the problem, unless i of course go through Asurion, and spend another 50-100$ for a replacement unit, which is just stupid.

Ive switched from being a diehard Android user (went through the Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, Droid X2, Droid Razr, and Razr Maxx) before giving in. But with that being said, i went through about 20+ updates from android and would never encounter such a stupid problem. It's so completely annoying because its such a small error, but at the same time comes with a HUGE price. It basically disables on of the main reasons i would ever switch to Iphone, having a built in iPod and speakers, that dont work anymore. No music, No video sound, No nothing. Ive tried it all. Theres NO water damage, ive dropped the phone once in its entire lifespan which was a year back and never had any problems since. It seems to be the updates problem. Ive cleaned everything i could, done the Siri trick (asking her to play a song for me, which has fixed it for some users), Ive done a hard reset (held the home button and power until it restarted twice), and ive gone through 2 complete restores (extracting everything, resetting to factory settings, and then re-downloading the software and music and data) with no avail. And let me make this clear once again, the dock connector is 100% dust free so its NOT ''dust making the iPhone think its connected to a dock or charging port''.

Has anyone else had this problem? Im currently running a Black 16GB iPhone 4s, on Verizon wireless' network, on iOS6 software.

Signed,

A ****** off Apple Customer.