The mute toggle on iPhone doesn’t mute media if you play something with it enabled, and you can still increase/decrease the volume of that, you just don’t get any notification sounds. So bit different than just turning the volume down for the whole device.

I keep mute enabled all the time because I get the notifications on my watch, and I forget it’s on because media still plays with sound. It’s actually really nice. One of the few things I actually like about iPhone.