Intermittent ringer issues with iPhone XS

[Slydude]

I wasn't sure where to put this thread but I think this might be a software issue of some sort so we'll start there.

I have an iPhone Xs running IOS 13.3. It has run like a champ until a little bit ago. About a month or two ago I noticed that when I got a call from my wife it went to voicemail and I never heard it ring. After a reboot things were fine and I thought that was the end of the story. Thanksgiving day I missed two calls from my mom asking if I needed a ride to the family dinner. Good thing I looked at the phone to send a message to someone or I might never have noticed that call. If I'd missed that there might have been leftover turkey.

I thought a reboot had fixed the problem but tonight I missed a call from my brother with the same behavior. The call was there when I looked at the notifications screen but I never heard the phone ring. I know the sounds are on because I get sounds from text messages and I got the phone to ring three different times when I did a test call from my wife's phone.

Here's what I know so far:
1. The ringer is on because I hear other calls when I get them. This seems to affect only certain callers each time it happens.
2. Other sounds are also working (text messages ding, music is heard etc).
3. Do Not Disturb is turned off.
4. The phone has not been put into silent mode with the switch on the left side of the phone.
5. I don't think there is an issue with the lightning connector being in headphone mode. I can hear sounds from the phone's speaker and I think I've only used a wired headset once with this phone and that was months ago.

Any ideas? I thought this might be an IOS 13 issue but I think the first time it happened I was still on IOS 12.

 

[chscag]

Hey Sly:

Go to your iCloud account and check your contacts listed there. First, make sure all your contacts are listed and match what's on your phone. Second, make sure no special notation is listed for the folks that you're not receiving the ring. For example... maybe a different ringtone for your Mom, brother, etc.

If everything is okay, go thru the setup for your phone again.

Problems like that can be hard to track down. I found that when weird things happen with contacts it's usually something that's not right on iCloud.

 

[IWT]

Hi Sly,

My wife had the same problem. I went through all the hoops, and checked iCloud as Charlie advised; but as my wife and I share the same Apple ID, I didn't expect to find problems at iCloud level.

In the end, the only thing that worked was to change the Ringtone and apply it to everybody. That worked fine. A week later I changed the Ringtone back to what was there before and, fingers crossed, no problems since.

worth a try, maybe?

Ian

 

[MacInWin]

Also, on the iPhone, Settings, Phone, Silence Unknown Callers should be off and check at that same page the Blocked Contacts to make sure nobody has slipped into the list.

 

[Slydude]

Good suggestions gents. I hadn't thought of any of these ideas. I checked the blocked list a few days ago and I don't remember either number being there but i didn't look through all of the numbers.

@Ian I would never have thought changing the ringtone would matter but I've seen other inexplicable solutions work.

I'll do some experimenting over the next few days and see what seems to work.

 

[Slydude]

Tried almost all of the suggestions except for the iCloud related ones with no luck. Neither of the affected contacts had special ringtones and neither of them was accidentally added to previously blocked callers. I'll test iCloud tomorrow.

 

[MacInWin]

Sly, I had this happen just yesterday for the first time. Phone never made a sound, nor did it vibrate. All that happened was a message popped up on the phone icon. Nothing special, no special ring tone, contact is in my contacts list, in iCloud as well. No reason for it not to ring. It is an iPhone 11 Pro, latest iOS version. Other than you and me, I've not heard about it anywhere else.