Your iPhone & its dock: Disabling the mute feature 2009/12/24 at 18:32
I recently purchased a dock for my iPhone from a guy on Ebay. It’s not an official Apple product, because $5 is a far better price than the $29 Apple wants for a piece of plastic. All-in-all, its a great little product, and it would be perfect but for one thing; every time I plug my iPhone 3G into it, it mutes the sound.
Of course, given that this dock has a Line Out jack on the back, it makes sense that it would disable my iPhone’s built-in speakers. After all, why would you want your iPhone’s tinny sound tarnishing whatever you plug in the back? However, seeing as I’m using it as a bed-side stand, there will never be a speaker system to tarnish. Here’s how to prevent it from muting your iPhone.
Step 1: Open it up. You’ll need a small phillips screwdriver, about 2.5mm in diameter. Just stab it through the rubber layer on the bottom and unscrew.
Step 2: Using a soldering iron, remove the tiny resistor (Pictured to the right) from the marked location on the PCB.
Step 3: Reassemble and enjoy. :)
Great find, but does that disable the Line Out jack?
Hoping to order mine from DealExtreme soon!
Unfortunately, yes. The resistor links a pin to ground, which, I believe, signals to the iPhone that it should disable its internal speaker and output audio via the pins leading to the Line Out jack.
All this could have been avoided if the dock’s makers had used a sensing jack, which would detect when a cable is inserted and only then connect the pin to ground.
The sound works when the charging cable isn’t connected. I got mine in the mail today. Works great.
Thanks man, just also got a few from dealextreme! Your trick works great, I can now use clock radio app on it perfectly!
Thanks for the great description, it was exactly was I searched for! In the end I even went one step further and just for fun added a sensing pin to the existing Line Out jack so the muting still works when a plug is inserted. If anybody is interested, click on my name for a some pictures.
Great find! Many thanks, now i don’t have to worry about missing calls when charging anymore.
You da man! I got mine and was afraid I wasn’t going to able to use it. I was able to scrape off the resistor with a screwdriver, be careful.
Is there a way to disable the dock mute on the software side because my iPhone must need cleaning as it mutes my sound every 5 seconds. I have an app to block the popup but the sound still mutes :(
Thanks, this is exactly the information I needed, I have that same dock (from Dealextreme).
Thanks for this. It has worked perfectly as I only want this to charge and no line out.
Ashley: Great find, great explanation. You were the first hit in Google for “iphone dock mute” too. Thanks!
Marcel: I liked your take on this too, nice hack!
Brettville: I had the same problem after some moisture got in around my mute / vibrate switch. I followed an iPhone disassembly guide on iFixit and bought a replacement part off eBay. From memory the part was the “headphone flex cable” or something similarly named, and cost around $10 shipped. Good luck!