Can iPhone ring when locked?

Yes it is Idris!!

It is 04.30 here in England and you Californians are probably not even in bed yet, let alone up early!!

I have just been for a walk round the corner to the park where my phone has four bars of signal not the two I usually have here indoors; sitting her as dawn breaks with three bars for some reason. Is the signal heightened due to lack of traffic on the network (and M25 or vice versa)?! Does weather play a part such as when my satellite signal disappears when it is stormy? Time from dialling my number on my wife's mobile to mine ringing about seven seconds. The seed began to germinate in the pub last night when the time was nearer ten seconds than the twenty or so experienced at home.

Anyway, the iPhone gets a second chance. I have spent two days trying to make it do what I want rather than pleasing itself. I knew it would be a struggle but think I underestimated the strength of the opposition. It really is a case of compromise between Windows and Android which have the advantage of being more manipulable (which I prefer) but being said to suffer from lack of reliability as a result and Apple which we hear is less liable to crashing (which I prefer too!).

At least I can watch my payTV when out now, voice dial my calls and have Siri read my texts. All I need to do now is spend hours converting my media and emailing myself photos because that appears the easiest way of getting one or two in. Perhaps Apple will grow on me?

Oh, happy days!

Mike.

Satellites are not involved with any cell phone, except for location services, which uses the GPS satellites plus local cell towers plus local Wi-Fi networks.

Your phone connects to cell towers for your calls. The carrier knows where you are because your phone periodically "calls home" to report its position. So if you move from one location to another that is covered by a different tower the network may take longer to find you when someone calls you. It will first try your last location, then try towers near that location, then continue expanding the search until it finds your phone. If it doesn't find it within 30 seconds it assumes that your phone is out of range or off and tells that to the caller.

If you are not moving around signal strength matters, as does network capacity. Each tower has a limited capacity for simultaneous calls. Once that limit is reached on your local tower the network will try to reach you on the next closest tower. There will be a delay of several seconds when this happens. And yes, cellular networks are in the microwave bands from 800 Mhz to 2100 Mhz, and are definitely affected by weather. You should see this in the number of dots displayed.

Thanks for your highly informative response Lawrence.

Are you able to proffer a reason as to why I could ring out but not receive calls? It was partly that which really threw me.

Your time spent in answering is much valued and appreciated.

Best wishes,

Mike.

When you make a call the network knows where you are immediately, because your phone contacts the tower it last heard from, and if it refuses the call it has a list of other recent towers, so there is little or no delay. Normally in an urban or suburban area there a 3 or more towers that you can connect to. If you have intermittent problems receiving calls it's probably just network overload, but it's a good idea to call your carrier's tech support and ask if there is anything that is not provisioned correctly on your account.

Our nearest carrier tower is 600m away although there is one half that distance belonging to another carrier. I know it is often possible to choose which service to connect to so will look into that when I find the right setting on the phone. Just looked and discovered that my current provider uses the same carrier as my last! Still worth a chat to my provider just in case there is anything they can tweak their end. Wonder what that might be? Not desperately worried since it is more important the mobile works elsewhere as I rarely hear it and advise prospective callers to dial the landline; showing my age!!

Mike.

mikefarnham wrote:

Yes it is Idris!!

It is 04.30 here in England and you Californians are probably not even in bed yet, let alone up early!!

Lawerence gave a good explanation that I have nothing to add to. Except to say I've been to California exactly twice in my life and the last time was about 15 years ago.

IdrisSeabright wrote:

mikefarnham wrote:

Yes it is Idris!!

It is 04.30 here in England and you Californians are probably not even in bed yet, let alone up early!!

Lawerence gave a good explanation that I have nothing to add to. Except to say I've been to California exactly twice in my life and the last time was about 15 years ago.

I also have nothing to add to Lawrence's explanation, and I agree that was very good.

I am a Californian, having moved there from the U.S. East Coast many years ago. And yes, late to bed and late to rise seems to align with my circadian clock.

Sorry Idris!

I believe it to be a name of Welsh derivation; at leas, I used to watch a TV programme called Ivor The Engine - a Welsh steam engine. When Jones the steam could not light his boiler Idris the dragon once obliged!

Anyway, back to the point, I was looking at the times people made their posts and was trying to guess where they were. Bit silly really. Election day today and by this time tomorrow we all might be wondering where we are in this country.

Mike.

mikefarnham wrote:

Sorry Idris!

I believe it to be a name of Welsh derivation; at leas, I used to watch a TV programme called Ivor The Engine - a Welsh steam engine. When Jones the steam could not light his boiler Idris the dragon once obliged!

No worries. I was just joking around. Yes, I do believe "Idris" is Welsh. However, I am using it in honor of someone, who if not a native born Californian, lived there for much of their life. I just keep very weird hours.

This article is helpeful.

When you read through all the obvious, at the bottom of the article is a discussion about the audio jack, and what happens it gets moisture or damaged.

https://www.payetteforward.com/my-iphone-wont-ring-heres-the-real-reason-why/

Not true . iPhone 6s does not ring when locked even if DND is OFF, as well as button on left of phone NOT on silent . There are NO options offered for SILENCE. other than “ always” or “ when locked”

marlyk923 wrote:

On the DND settings, the only “silence “ options are - - “ always”

- “ when phone is locked”

One must check one or the other - I cannot “uncheck “ one without the other adding itself .

That is absolutely true. It's also completely irrelevant UNLESS you turn DND. If you do NOT enable DND, either manually or by a schedule, those settings do NOTHING.

kdkrocks wrote:

I don’t have Do Not Disturb On....still won’t ring in lock mode & there’s no way toturnit off.

Check the mute switch on the side of the phone. It's just above the volume buttons.

Try going to Settings>General>Accessibility>Assistive Touch. Turn it on. Then, tap the white button that appears on the screen. See if the bell icon says "Unmute" under it. If it does, tap it. You can then disable Assistive Touch.

Once again, if DND is turned off, NONE of the other settings on that screen have any effect on your phone.

I've had this problem happen twice of phone not ringing or even vibrating when locked tho DND was off and volume up. This is a recent glitch (my phone is 2 years old) and has occurred when I allowed a "settings upgrade" to be downloaded on my phone.

Your Assistive Touch solution fixed half of the problem (yay), but instead of ringing the phone vibrated when locked, tho I had a ring tone set. To get my ring back I had to do the following...(from another post)

Turn silence button on the off(red not showing)

go to settings and unlock the sound as following:

settings--> sound-->lock sound

turn it off, and then turn it on.

The sound will come back

This problem is maddening and the solutions should not be so obscure and difficult to find a solution. I've linked it directly to the upgrades download. PS - in DND under Silence: it does not seem to matter which is checked "always" or "while iphone is locked". Now that I've fixed it, it rings while locked on either setting.

Your question confuses me.

The Settings > Do Not Disturb only affects the iPhone's behavior if you have Do Not Disturb turned on.

I assume you do not have Do Not Disuturb on. In that case, the iPhone will ring when locked regardless of the settings in the Do Not Disturb area.