The Silent Mode is a phone feature that allows users to lower the volume of their device all the way down. Accessing this feature would make the device enter into Vibrate mode. When the volume button is pressed down again, the device is silenced, enabling the phone to bar any audible and vibrated alerts.
As oddly as it may sound, the Silent Mode seems to have disappeared in devices that were updated with the Android 5.0 Lollipop. Just like any new software releases, the latest Android update has some bugs, which the developers and beta testers still need to flush out during the software's testing stage.
The missing Silent Mode is only seen on devices that run the Lollipop system firmware. Users whose devices have been stripped off the silencing feature are left with certain levels of volume and vibration in their devices.
Google, which is said to have removed the Silent Mode in the latest firmware update, may decide to put it back in when the firmware gets another update in the near future. However, there's no concrete reason why it was removed.
Last week, users reported that their devices were experiencing a Wi-Fi-related bug. This time, several reports are claiming that devices with the Android 5.0 Lollipop have seen their phones' Silent Mode disappear. Moreover, users of the Nexus 7 tablet reported that their device had issues in video playback after they updated to Android 5.0 Lollipop.
"I'm also having this issue," said one of the users. "The YouTube app keeps saying 'There was a problem while playing. Touch to retry.'"
One user suggested wiping the cache partition as a temporary solution. Another user recommended uninstalling, rebooting and reinstalling the software as a temporary solution. Other rebooting cases were also reported to work temporarily.
The Silent Mode can still be found on other Android tablets such as the Nexus 9. The absence of the feature was found only among phones, not tablets. This has led people to believe that the missing Silent Mode is really caused by a bug.
"I'm so disappointed by the Lollipop update because of this problem! Lollipop has a fresh look but you can't use any video on Nexus 7. That's nice! And now we have to wait for 5.1 or what?" one user complained.
Google has made no comment yet on how to address the issue. In the meantime, users can get used to the sometimes annoying sound of a vibrating phone until perhaps Google rolls out the next round of updates.
