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Can iPhone ring when locked?

My phone won't ring when locked. Can this be changed? Settings/ Do Not Disturb only gives me two choices under the "Silence" heading: "Always", or "Only while iPhone is locked". I am unable to remove it. Is it possible to elect neither?

iPhone 5, iOS 7.0.4

Posted on Dec 6, 2013 10:42 PM

Reply
109 replies

Mar 27, 2014 9:35 PM in response to COJayhawk

COJayhawk wrote:

Does anyone have any real and pertinent info from Apple/other users?

Two iPhone 5s models here, both on iOS 7.1. Carrier is Sprint. Unless DND or the mute switch or Airplane mode is on, our phones do ring, whether or not the phone is locked.


Something you might do is double-check everything carefully in Settings > Sounds that has to do with ringing. Beyond the obvious like making sure the "Ringer & Alerts" volume slider is up fairly far, as a test make sure "Vibrate on Silent" is on & call the phone. Also check the default ringtone -- a few of them are not very loud. I use classic > pinball because it is loud & its bright, treble sounds are easy for the tiny speaker in the phone to reproduce loudly.


A long shot to check is Settings > Phone. Make sure that somehow the number you are calling from is not on the "Blocked" list. Also, if it is in Contacts, click "Edit" & make sure it is either set to the default ringtone or one you know is loud enough to be easily heard.

Mar 28, 2014 2:02 AM in response to sberman

sberman wrote:


I have a thought ...


My iPhone's behavior is exactly as ChrisJ4203 describes.


But coincidentally I share one other attribute with ChrisJ4203. I am also with AT&T.


Might there be some carrier involvement in the behavior we're all seeing?

In the USA I use Virgin Mobile/Sprint

In the UK it's 02 and Three

My son has EE (UK)


All of our phones ring when the screen is locked, on all of those carriers. I am pretty clear that this is a case of CF.

Apr 8, 2014 2:53 PM in response to Johnonline55

Hi Johnonline55,


Chrisj4203 says this is his settings on all five phones:


Do Not Disturb is turned off both Manual and Scheduled. Silence has a checkmark by Always


I, same as you, have this issue with the phone not ringing or notifying on texts when locked. You say: Settings/ Do Not Disturb only gives me two choices under the "Silence" heading: "Always", or "Only while iPhone is locked". I am unable to remove it. Is it possible to elect neither?


This was my burning question as well. So, I came here looking for a solution and as I am reading this I am thinking that since Chris has "Always" checkmarked and I have chosen intuitively to put a check mark next to "Only when phone is locked" although it seems it shouldn't matter or apply. I suspect that John has done this as well. Now I am hypothesizing that "Always" should be checked because the phone does not ring when the phone is locked when I have "Only when phone is locked" selected. After making this change to "Always" my phone did ring when locked just now and since it is unlikely that I will come back here later to say whether it works or not consistently, I throw it out there as a possibllity.

Apr 9, 2014 6:15 AM in response to Johnonline55

Well I did come back to say that apparently my phone did not ring while locked not sure how it rang because when I turned on "Always" the phone never rings. and when I turn on "Only when locked" it does not ring when locked but rings otherwise. So, even though "Manual" is "off" it seems that the Silence feature does effect it. So, nevermind tyring this.

Apr 9, 2014 8:46 AM in response to Johnonline55

Okay, back again. found this:


HoustonK


I still continue to have this issue. I fix this by going to settings> general> accessibility > AssistiveTouch.

Turn AssistiveTouch on, you should see a white circle on upper left corner, tap it to see a pop up of four icons. Tap the device icon,another screen appears where you seen an bell that you can unmute/mute. That fixes mine every time. Don't know why it mutes itself here even though nowhere else on my phone shows the phone to be on mute!


This solved my issue and someone else says it happens repeatedly.

Jun 4, 2015 8:29 AM in response to StevieFish

I have the same problem, I constantly miss calls, this just started recently. One forum suggested turning off the automatic locking of the phone, this seems to be working. Fortunately, I have no need to lock the phone and don't use a passcode anyway!


Apple dropped the ball on this one, the phone should ALWAYS ring by default!


My wife as a ZTE phone and we intentionally setup a Do Not Disturb schedule to avoid random 1:00 AM wrong numbers.

Jun 4, 2015 10:01 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

Honestly, I really don't understand the whole thing. When it wasn't ringing, the DND was set to manual and lock was set to 1 minute. I assume manual is is off? or do I need to set it to automatic?


Funny thing is, it used to ring just fine. Never lock seemed to fix it for me, and I assume there are no adverse effects to turning the automatic lock off?

Can iPhone ring when locked?

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