Alarm Clock randomly does not go off

davikokar · January 9th, 2013, 04:53 AM

Hi, I am using the built in Android alarm clock. From time to time, let's say once every two-three months the alarm clock just does not go off.

I read in other posts that the reason could be a "TaskKiller app", but I don't have this app. The alarms are properly set and on, and the phone itself is also on (charger is plugged in).

Any ideas ?

jefboyardee · January 9th, 2013, 09:08 AM

When you set the alarm, does its icon appear up in the notification bar every time?

RyanB · January 9th, 2013, 09:00 PM

Also, you could try setting an additional alarm (from a separate app you would get from Google Play) and see if it "outperforms" the one that's built into the OS.

davikokar · January 10th, 2013, 01:54 AM

Yes

CodeMonkey · January 10th, 2013, 03:57 PM

Are you using a custom alarm tone held on a micro sd card? If so it's possible that the phone is periodically losing sight of the memory card and therefore the tone, meaning that the alarm would trigger but would have nothing to play..
I've seen this behaviour in the past with custom ringtones and message tones.
Only way to verify if this is the problem would be to set a standard tone for the alarm and see if the problem goes away.

OstrichSaK · January 11th, 2013, 04:07 PM

What version of Android are you running. I had this happen in years past and then went a long stretch w/o having it again. Well, recently I loaded the unlocked version of Jelly Bean. The important part of this fact is that for some JB has random reboots. What I've discovered is that with the newest version of the stock alarm clock if you set it or have repeating alarms (say you get up at the same time M-F) and your phone reboots itself for whatever reason... your alarm clock will not go off at the next scheduled time. I did lost of testing with two different devices running stock ROMs and stock alarm clocks to confirm. Unfortunately I was unable to find a fix for this as it's some sort of bug within the stock Clock that needs to be resolved at the Developer level.

The most simple work around was to install an app I found called Alarm Clock Plus. It's free, highly rated, feels like the stock Clock app and the best part is when you set your alarm if your phone reboots the alarm will still go off at the next set time if you use a schedule or just an individual alarm. My wife and I both use our phone as our ONLY alarm clock and for us this was the solution that worked. Just make sure you go through all of the settings because there are LOTs of them that could affect performance so take your time the first time.