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A Fix for No Sound Coming from an iPhone 

22 May 2013

Let's just preface this with the statement: I am an idiot.

A few weeks back, I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth, and I moved in such a way that my iPhone 4S fell out of my pocket straight into the toilet. I did the old "quickly throw it into a bowl of rice and let it dry out" trick, and the phone really seemed no worse for the wear.

Except now the battery only lasts about 14-16 hours, tops. I don't make it through a full day. Not a huge deal, though. I can charge it if I need to, and I'm planning on upgrading to the next version of the iPhone when it comes out this fall (maybe?).

However, I started noticing some weird behavior with the headphones/speakers. I'd be listening to something and all of a sudden it would go silent. It took me three or four times before I noticed (by double-clicking the home button and flicking left to see the volume slider) that the phone thought it was connected to a dock connector.

It definitely was not connected to a dock connector.

Still, this was mostly an inconvenience. I would just unplug the headphones and then plug the headphones back in, and everything would work.

Until the last couple of days.

When the phone decided it was always connected to a dock connector.

That sucked.

I googled and googled and eventually stumbled upon this post on the Apple forums. Using Assistive Touch? Worth a try, I suppose.

So:

  1. Go to Settings
  2. General
  3. Accessibility
  4. Assistive Touch
  5. Turn it to "On"
  6. Now you see a little white dot in the upper left, click it
  7. Click Device
  8. The bell will likely say "Unmute", click it
  9. Now your sound works

Well, holy crap. First, I'd never played with the Assistive Touch stuff. That's a really wonderfully implemented feature for folks who are maybe less adept (or not physically capable) at navigating the iPhone's gestures. Seriously good stuff by Apple. Secondly, why in the world does Assistive Touch know that my phone's speaker is "muted" but not the rest of the Apple OS. Apple giveth and Apple taketh away.