System Settings > Sound > Ringer volume - only changes ringer volume when no other sounds playing

The system-settings should be using the pulse dbus api instead (stream-restore) when changing volumes (basically changing volume per role). A similar bug also exists for the clock app (bug 1376513).

Remember the stream-restore dbus api is only available on touch.

The design is at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Sound#Phone

We need to enhance the volume controls a great deal, the primary control is supposed to be labeled based on the active role.

We currently have no way to affect the alert volume. Its far to brief a tone to control during an alert and should have a permanent control in the panel imo.

In fact it would be much clearer to have 4 controls in settings one for each mode - alarm, alert, multimedia, and phone (which I assume means ringtone). so the user could both check and control the levels.

That the typical alert is "far too brief a tone to control" its volume does not necessarily mean that it "should have a permanent control in the panel". That problem could be fixed by following the spec: the volume controls should control alert volume whenever none of an alarm, phone call, or media are playing -- that is, most of the time. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Sound#primary-output> Anyway, that seems to be separate from the two bugs in the bug description.

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

(Pat, the bug with alerts being "far too brief a tone to control during an alert" is bug 1478506.)

I, too, believe that Ubuntu phone's sound GUI is ill-designed. It does not give the user control over what channel's volume she changes. Instead, the OS tries to be overly clever, such as always controlling the app in foreground (which may or may not be desired), adding some bias when speakers are on in the phone app (resulting in sound being played though volume is zero and the crossed out speaker symbol isshown), games starting with sound on even when silent mode is on, etc, etc.
See also
Bug #1483890
Bug #1384274

Rüdiger, the current implementation is extremely buggy -- see for example bug 1336536, bug 1418210, bug 1485522, and bug 1409696. So you can't use the implementation to judge the quality of the design.

Matthew, thank you for your comment. Being (just) an active user, but not developer of Ubuntu Phone, it is hard to distinguish between design and implementation. I have no knowledge of the intended design (perhaps you can point me to the respective ressources?), I can only judge what the "naive" user of Ubuntu Phone sees, and try to infer "what it is meant to be like".

Thus, I agree, the first sentence of my post should better have been "at this time, the user experience is sub optimal". I know that bugs can break good design and that bad design can break good software. But that's indistinguishable from the user's perspective. I am aware that at this time most users of Ubuntu Phone are probably its developers, and know which is which. But we agree that his should change soon :-).

Regards,
Rüdiger