Discovering that the person on the other end of the phone can’t hear you talk, especially while driving on the freeway, is frustrating, scary and dangerous. Is your headset broken? Is it the iPhone itself? Do you need to repair or replace? Very frustrating.

However, as I recently learned, it’s likely a simple issue called “headphone mode” – the setting the iPhone automatically switches into when you listen to music with standard headphones (not the headset with the microphone and button). If the headphones are removed the wrong way (what that is, I do not know), the iPhone might think you still have them inserted and won’t respond correctly when you try to use the earpiece.

A call to the Apple technician recommended rapidly plugging and unplugging the headphones. However, that didn’t work for me. The other option was to restore the iPhone, erasing all my contacts, photos, etc.

Before doing that, I tried one last thing that worked immediately. Here’s what to do:

1. Put your iPhone into iPod mode with the headphones plugged in
2. Unplug the headphones. iPhone goes back to regular mode.

Voila, the problem is solved. Enjoy.

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