Tag: iPhone

iPhone Contact Details Not Saving

My wife recently came to me with a simple problem – when she tried to update certain contact details on her iPhone, they would disappear and not save. I verified this issue by adding a birthday to someone’s name. As soon as the contacts window was closed and reopened, the birthday was gone. Even a simple change such as changing the number type from ‘mobile’ to ‘iPhone’ wouldn’t stick, reverting back to ‘mobile’.

iPhone as the phone number type, vs mobile. This would not save after the contacts window was closed.

A quick look at her settings revealed her contacts was synced to Gmail, which I assumed was the culprit. However, a cursory search didn’t come up with much as most others had synchronization issues. I had to dig pretty deep, but I did discover someone having a similar issue –  Birthdays wouldn’t save unless the year was included. Sure enough, my wife wasn’t putting the year in for birthdays. I tested this by adding a birthday year in with a contact of hers. It saved. Ah ha. It turns out, Gmail can only save certain details in certain formats. This differs from iCloud, which allows phone number types such as ‘iPhone’ to be saved, along side year less birthdays.

The fix was easy enough – we moved her from using Gmail as her contacts sync to iCloud. Now she can change the little details and add birthdays to contacts whom she knows the days, but not the years they were born.

Misc. details about this specific post:
iPhone 8
iOS 12.0
Issue date: Oct. 6th, 2018

Siri Doesn’t Make Calls on Speakerphone – a Fix

UPDATE: This issue has since been resolved so long as you have the latest iOS update.

I had noticed for some time that when using Siri to call someone on speakerphone, the call is made without using the speaker even though Siri would say she was calling the person on speaker. For example:

Me: “Siri, call mom on speaker”
Siri: “Calling mom on speaker”

But then… the call is made normally but without the speakerphone being used. Now, I can manually tap on the speakerphone icon and that works, so what could be causing this issue?

Wi-Fi calling. After going into Settings -> Phone -> Wi-Fi Calling and turning it off, I was immediately able to make a call on speakerphone with Siri.

I am not sure if there will be a fix for this issue, either through my carrier (T-Mobile) or through Apple (especially since this has been an issue since this feature was first released). Still, for anyone else who has this issue here is your fix.

Know something I don’t or have a question? Post below!