My stupid phone refuses to play nice with my stupid headphones!
September 17, 2018 8:12 PM Subscribe
The sound on my cell phone goes crazy when I try to use headphones! It immediately drops down to zero, no matter what I do. Has anyone else had this problem and found a fix?
This is the most irritating thing. I have a Droid Turbo 2, a couple years old. It always worked fine. All of a sudden, it started doing this crazy thing. When I'm listening to music (youtube, netflix, spotify etc), and I plug in my headphones, the sound instantly drops down to zero. I can see the needle on the sound bar quickly swing to the left. I hit the buttons to make it go up and it immediately zings back down to zero. I literally fight with my phone making the indicator go up and down and up and down. Sometimes i can get it to hold for a few minutes, but then it just slides left to mute again. It's driving me crazy!
This is particularly infuriating when I'm on a long commute or exercising because I need to use my headphones and I literally cant hear anything out of my phone. These are the same headphones I've always had and which always worked, but just in case, I bought a new pair... and had the same problem. To clarify, this is not the phone lowering the sound to protect my ears. It completely mutes it and sometimes even turns it to "alarms only".
I looked online and apparently this is a common problem which supposedly is a glitch from a recent update, except that I haven't updated my phone in a while and this just started a few weeks ago. I've read tons of droid forums where people suggested fixes for this problem but nothing has worked. I'm at my wits end! I can't afford a new phone right now and the rest of the phone works fine. It's just the sound when using headphones.
Please someone tell me they've had this same problem and were able to fix it! I will try any suggestion EXCEPT a factory reset.
This is the most irritating thing. I have a Droid Turbo 2, a couple years old. It always worked fine. All of a sudden, it started doing this crazy thing. When I'm listening to music (youtube, netflix, spotify etc), and I plug in my headphones, the sound instantly drops down to zero. I can see the needle on the sound bar quickly swing to the left. I hit the buttons to make it go up and it immediately zings back down to zero. I literally fight with my phone making the indicator go up and down and up and down. Sometimes i can get it to hold for a few minutes, but then it just slides left to mute again. It's driving me crazy!
This is particularly infuriating when I'm on a long commute or exercising because I need to use my headphones and I literally cant hear anything out of my phone. These are the same headphones I've always had and which always worked, but just in case, I bought a new pair... and had the same problem. To clarify, this is not the phone lowering the sound to protect my ears. It completely mutes it and sometimes even turns it to "alarms only".
I looked online and apparently this is a common problem which supposedly is a glitch from a recent update, except that I haven't updated my phone in a while and this just started a few weeks ago. I've read tons of droid forums where people suggested fixes for this problem but nothing has worked. I'm at my wits end! I can't afford a new phone right now and the rest of the phone works fine. It's just the sound when using headphones.
Please someone tell me they've had this same problem and were able to fix it! I will try any suggestion EXCEPT a factory reset.
Ok, this is likely to be the least helpful comment ever, given that you say there's a known glitch with your model's software, but... I had a similar thing happening to me a couple of years ago, turned out that when I plugged in the headphone jack, it stretched the rubber case funny and the case would press on the "down volume" button.
posted by aimedwander at 8:53 PM on September 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by aimedwander at 8:53 PM on September 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
Seconding Aimedwander--if you haven't tried getting the lint out of the jack, it's a fast and free fix that solves a surprising amount of problems. I use a toothpick and am always shocked by how much gunk comes out. (Also solves a ton of charging problems.)
posted by matrixclown at 9:23 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by matrixclown at 9:23 PM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
This has happened to me! The culprit—and I cannot explain this—seemed to be the headphones, these Yurbuds.
Once I switched headphones, the problem went away. I never figured out what on earth caused it. Man, was it annoying, though.
posted by purpleclover at 9:34 PM on September 17, 2018
Once I switched headphones, the problem went away. I never figured out what on earth caused it. Man, was it annoying, though.
posted by purpleclover at 9:34 PM on September 17, 2018
Nthing taking a toothpick to the headphone jack and going on a lint mining expedition.
posted by mumkin at 11:08 PM on September 17, 2018
posted by mumkin at 11:08 PM on September 17, 2018
Have you tried a pair of Bluetooth headphones?
posted by AugustWest at 4:29 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by AugustWest at 4:29 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Sorry guys, cleaning out the jack didnt help. What I'm looking for is something to change in settings, or maybe an app that would lock the sound at a certain level.... something like that. Help!
posted by silverstatue at 11:00 AM on September 18, 2018
posted by silverstatue at 11:00 AM on September 18, 2018
I have an issue with my droid that sounds possibly related - under settings -> volume, there are separate volume sliders for ringtone, notifications, touch feedback, and media. (I had no idea all this was there before I started having this problem.) Sometimes - for no reason I can discern - my phone will decide it needs to mute the media volume only. When it does this, just turning up the volume on the phone in a normal fashion does nothing. And sometimes, it decides to do this only when headphones are plugged in, while playing media normally the rest of the time. The way to fix this is to go into the volume settings and manually turn the media volume back up.
After looking around online, the only possible cause I've found is that sometimes, an app or program will mute the media volume - possibly an autoplaying video in an ad or something - and then the media volume will remain muted even after the app or program in question is closed. I SUSPECT that there is also something that happens sometimes where the very act of plugging in headphones confuses the phone into muting the media volume - I can't find any verification of this online though. But either way, the only solution I've found is to go under the specific volume settings. In your case, you might want to try this while the headphones are plugged in.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:51 PM on September 18, 2018
After looking around online, the only possible cause I've found is that sometimes, an app or program will mute the media volume - possibly an autoplaying video in an ad or something - and then the media volume will remain muted even after the app or program in question is closed. I SUSPECT that there is also something that happens sometimes where the very act of plugging in headphones confuses the phone into muting the media volume - I can't find any verification of this online though. But either way, the only solution I've found is to go under the specific volume settings. In your case, you might want to try this while the headphones are plugged in.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:51 PM on September 18, 2018
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posted by caek at 8:15 PM on September 17, 2018