For some reasons I can't adjust the volume on my iPhone 4 anymore. Whenever I press it the popup showing the bell is shown but not the bar indicating the . I can't adjust the volume at all. Also playing music in the musicplayer doesn't work anymore. The play-symbol is shown but I just can't hear a thing.
Does anyone have a clue what is going wrong?
This might be caused by several things, one of them being your phone believing it's connected to an external speaker through the 30-pin connector. When your phone believes it's connected to an external speaker, it assumes the speaker controls the volume, so you can't control the volume. In addition to that, the phone will attempt to transmit any audio through the 30-pin connector. I can't really think of any solution, other than trying to connect and disconnect from a charching cable or docking station, or try a restore.
I assume you've already attempted to reboot the phone, another thing you could try is to connect it to some headphones with the mini-jack port and see if you're able to control the volume with them plugged in. If you have a cotton swab that can fit in the 30-pin connector, you can also try to clean it (do NOT use water, soap or acid, simply a dry, clean swab).
If nothing helps, I suggest you hand it in for a check-up at the nearest Apple Retail store.
You can try using the Assistive Touch which is found by going to:
Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> AssistiveTouch
Turn that on and you should find a dot looking like this:
Click on it, and go to Device and then try turning the volume up and/or down.
I found a totally bizarre solution to the problem where on earphones, audio worked fine, but on the iPhone 4s speaker no app audio and no music. Could not adjust volume, icon appeared without slider.
My fix (I think): was to re-setup "Find iPhone" (the lost iPhone app) activate it and then page find the phone. I got sound out of the iPhone speaker and problem has not recurred - been about 10 days now.
None of the other things worked: changing cable connector, cleaning and so forth.
The other answer is correct in saying that it thinks it is plugged into something. It could either be the headphone jack is busted, or more likely, you disconnected the iPhone from your computer without ejecting it.
A simple fix (hopefully) is to plug the iPhone into your computer and make sure it can be viewed in iTunes. Once that happens, eject the iPhone and attempt to change the volume.
It worked for me.
*you can also access your general settings and do a settings reset which won't delete any media, apps, or data but obviously will force you to realign and chance your phone with your preferences. When I faced this issue I found it to be the easiest way to resolve the problem.
I just fixed the same issue with my iphone, to fix it i use wd-40 + brush. Several drops of wd-40 to 30pin connector wait a few seconds and clean connector with a brush. After that clean up connector from wd-40 and it's works great:)
I had exactly the same problem (volume on earphones only, no speaker audio control) and tried the "find iphone app" solution mentioned above. It works great! What a mystery...
Steps: go to "find iphone" app, login, select your device, select "send alert"
