Voicemail pauses when I put phone up to my ear

[RickBeatty]

My S7 has version 5.0.32

When I hold the phone to my ear it just pauses voicemail playback. It doesn't lock the device.

Disabling security as mentioned by another user is not an acceptable option. That's ridiculous.

[jed9340]

If you hold the phone in front of you and press play, then place your finger over the proximity sensor, the screen will shut off and audio will pause. If you remove your finger immediately, it will show the app and the paused audio.

However, at least for mine, if you press play then place your finger on the sensor and hold it, mine goes dark, pauses, flashes back on briefly and dimly, then off again and locks. If I remove my finger, I have to press the home or power key and it will show my locked phone. My lock timer is set to 5 secs, which I believe is the smart thing to do. And before anyone says I should change that, I would argue that the phone dialer app has no problems with this feature. When I place a call and place my finger on the sensor, the screen goes off and stays off, when I remove my finger it returns me to the app regardless of how long it is held there.

So the same behavior is expected of this app. I should be able to press play, cover the sensor, the screen goes off and play continues. When I remove my finger play should continue without issue and return me to the app.

[DKP89MN]

This thread was about solving the problem of voice mail messages pausing when moving the phone to one's ear. Turning off screen lock security solves this problem. If everyone still wants to have their cake and eat it too, Verizon will need to engage the appropriate software engineering department with a trouble ticket to fix the code that causes the glitch when using their Voice Mail app on a Samsung/Android phone with screen lock security activated. By the way, Samsung Pay does work without having to use screen lock security (as opposed to Android Pay). Ridiculous that you can't use screen lock security if you want voice mail to work correctly? Maybe, but until Verizon fixes their app, you're going to have to live with one or the other.

[jed9340]

I agree with you that there may be a choice, phone security or a voicemail app. However ultimately the right answer would be Verizon fix your app so you don't have to disable security to make it function.

As a side note, that fix didn't work for my phone. The audio still pauses and the phone shuts off the screen. The only difference being when I press the button to wake it back up it loads straight into the app instead of security.

[DKP89MN]

I have a S6 and my Verizon Visual Voicemail app version is 5.0.43. I still haven't experienced the glitch with vm since disabling lock screen security. I understand that's not an ideal solution for many people, but it's the only solution I've been able to use. I think the ball is in Verizon's court at this point for a fix.

[DKP89MN]

Oh yeah, Verizon totally needs to fix this so both security and VM works properly. Strange that disabling lock screen security didn't solve it for you. One thing I did (not sure if you did, or if it makes a difference in every case) was restart my phone each time I changed my lock screen security option to make sure the change applied. I believe my phone prompted me to do so each time I changed it. Give that a shot (if you haven't already) and see if that makes a difference.

[jed9340]

Nice find!! When I switch to no security and reboot, it fixes it for me also. If I go and change back to security without rebooting it immediately stops working again. This is great info... Now where's the developers?

[Chanfam]

Quick question, what security option were you guys using?  Want to make sure there is as much information as possible.

[jed9340]

I use fingerprint with pin backup and 30sec auto timeout

[DKP89MN]

Using fingerprint, PIN, password, or pattern all result in the VM glitch for me. Using either swipe (no security) or nothing at all prevented the glitch. FYI, changes to screen time-out made no difference with any screen lock security settings.