I’m using an iPhone 6S Plus 128 GB. Ever since I upgraded from the 6 Plus to the 6S Plus in September 2015 (launch day), I noticed an annoying, intermittent issue where the audio will just randomly pause itself. This would happen in virtually any app that plays audio, including:
- the Music app (playing locally stored tracks synced directly from Mac iTunes -- I’m not using the Apple Music service, and i also am not using the iTunes Match service);
- Voice Record Pro 7 (recordings will just randomly pause themselves);
- Overcast (podcasts, even when fully downloaded, randomly pause);
- Calm (a meditation app, it pauses itself); and
- Audible (pauses itself even when the books are fully downloaded and local to the phone).
- Even Video Recording would sometimes pause itself
The random pauses seem to have no particular rhyme or reason. Sometimes they come in waves, and keep recurring. Other times, I could go for hours without it happening.
I tried many different approaches to fix this, including: complete restore from backup, and even swapping the device for a new one at the Apple store. The problem persisted throughout iOS 9.0.X, 9.1.X, and 9.2.
Finally, my solution was to delete approximately 25-50% of the apps on my phone, which means I deleted at least 50-100 apps and maybe more than that. Now, after deleting all those apps, apparently I am not having the pausing problem anymore! Yay! I will post here again if the pausing returns.
Note, I did not have/don’t have GV Phone by Mo+ on my phone. However, I figured if a rogue app could cause audio pausing for someone else as PasadenaMAC noted, it could cause it for me too, and I think I was right about that.
If you don’t hear from me in the next 2 weeks, assume the problem is solved and the solution of deleting a lot of apps worked. Obviously, I didn't try to narrow down to figure out *which* app was the problem. I just had a ton of apps that I either never used or rarely used, I'd been wanting to do a spring cleaning on the phone anyway, so my big "unused app purge" obviously caught the culprit up and expunged it.