Losing your sound on an Apple iPhone can be very frustrating. You might discover you are not hearing your phone ring or you are not hearing any type of sound coming from the speaker(s). You might not be able to hear the person you are trying to talk to on a phone conversation, or you might not be able to hear music or a streaming app.
The first obvious item to check is the Ring/Silent switch. Unfortunately Apple uses a poor design for the switch and it is very easily accidentally turned off. If you find it is off, and you turn it on, and you have sound ... good, you're done. That was easy.
Still no sound. Check the up or down volume buttons on the side of your phone. If the volume is all the way down, move up the volume up and down and see if you have sound. If you have sound, good.
Still no sound? Now you have to try a few things.
Go to Settings > Sounds and drag the Ringer And Alerts slider to turn the volume up.
Still no sound?
Go to Settings > Sounds and check a sample of another ring tone (make sure you remember which one you had selected if you want to get it back). Do you hear a new ring tone. If yes, good.
You might try Restarting, and if that doesn't work, try Resetting your iPhone. BUT WAIT. Resetting is a little drastic, and might cause you a lot of work to get things back to normal.
Here are few more things to try first ...
Go to Settings > Bluetooth and turn off Bluetooth. Then check the sound again.
Connect a headphone. If you can hear sound through the headphone, remove it and clear any dust or debris from the headphone port on your device -- the lightning connector or the old style headphone port ...
Dry blow on the area where the lightning connector connects on your iPhone or old style headphone port. There might be some debris in their that causes the iPhone to mistakenly sense that a headphone is plugged in. If you blow with your mouth, make sure you don't blow spit on the connector.
You might also try restarting the phone -- instructions directly below. Or you might try
Restart iPhone. Hold down the Sleep/Wake button until the red slider appears. Slide your finger across the slider to the right to turn off iPhone. Wait a few seconds or 20-30 seconds if you have time to kill, and then turn the iPhone back on by holding down the Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears. The phone comes on and now you can check the sound. if it works, good.
Still no sound? Plug your iPhone into a charger. If you hear the connect chime, that is a good sign, because you know your speaker is working. Check for sound now. If it works, good.
Still no sound? No you might want to consider taking the iPhone to have a Genius take a look. If you determined to still try this on your own, you can try to reset your phone. Resetting will cause you
If you can’t turn off iPhone or if the no-sound problem continues, you may need to reset iPhone. Do this only if you’re unable to restart your iPhone.
DO THIS AS A LAST RESORT. Some selections don't erase your whole iPhone, but do clear some important information, like Wi-Fi passwords. If the iPhone has a hardware problem, none of these selections will help, and you will have lost some information and wasted time for nothing. AGAIN ... It might be better to have an Apple Store Genius take a look.
Reset iPhone. Hold down the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time for at least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.
Next you will see a list of resetting possibilities ...
Reset All Settings
Erase All Content and Settings
Reset Network Settings
Reset Keyboard Settings
Reset Home Screen Layout
Reset Location & Privacy
With the above settings, you can reset the word dictionary, network settings, home screen layout, and location warnings. You can also erase all of your content and settings.
Apple's instructions for Sound Problem
Go to Settings > Sounds and check a sample of another ring tone (make sure you remember which one you had selected if you want to get it back). Do you hear a new ring tone. If yes, good.
Still no sound?
If you hear no sound or distorted sound from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch speaker
Get help with the speaker on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
If the speaker on your iOS device doesn't work as expected, follow these steps. Try again after each step:
Go to Settings > Sounds and drag the Ringer And Alerts slider to turn the volume up.
If you hear sound from the speaker, follow the rest of these steps. If you can't hear sound from the speaker, contact Apple Support.
If your device has a Ring/Silent switch, make sure it's set to ring. (If you can see orange, your device is set to silent.)
Restart your device.
Open an app that has music or sound effects. Adjust the volume with the volume buttons or the slider in Control Center.
Go to Settings > Bluetooth and turn off Bluetooth. Then check the sound again.
Connect a headset. If you can hear sound through the headset, remove it and clear any dust or debris from the headset port on your device.
If your device is in a case, make sure that the case doesn't block the speaker.
Use a brush to gently clear any debris from the speaker and Lightning connector (or 30-pin dock connector). The brush should have soft, clean, dry bristles.
Update your device to the latest version of iOS.
If you follow these steps and still hear no sound or distorted sound, contact Apple Support.
Do you know how to force an app to quit?
At the Home screen, double-click the Home button and swipe upwards on the app screen that you want to quit. Unfortunately Apple iPhone doesn't quit apps when you close them. When you double click on the Home button, you might discover you have about 7 or 8 apps open or even more. If too many apps are open, your iPhone might run way too slow. Quit apps you aren't using and you will notice a speedup of your Apple iPhone.
Do you know how to close multiple Safari windows?
Same thinking goes for mobile Safari. You might have too many Safari windows open, too. Touch the top of the phone above the web address area. When you see the bottom task bar with the forward and back buttons in the lower left, you will also see a plural page icon in the lower right. Touch that icon and all the pages you have open will be displayed like a rolodex. Touch the "X" in the upper left of each page you want to close. Try to whittle down to at least 3 pages open. Just checking while writing these instructions, I had 69 pages. No wonder the iPhone was slowing down!