Is there such thing as a ringer lock app that actually works?!

[SkinJob]

I'm racking my head trying to find a way to keep the ringer volume from dropping, and thus missing calls. I spent the last three days downloading apps from everywhere that purport to do this. NONE WORK! Nothing. Nada. Zip. They're are all useless. I don't even know why they're on the market.

Has anyone actually had one that worked?? I have an HTC Desire running MIUI XJ if that matters. Here is just a small sampling of some of the apps I've tried that only succeeded in wasting my time:

LockRingerVolume
Smart Volume
Volume Locker
VolumeLock
Volume Preventer Locker
Settings Lock Lite
Ring Lock Lite
RingGuard
AVC Advanced Volume Control
Persist +

 

[chanchan05]

How exactly is tge ringer volume dropping? Like wrong presses on the volume key? Or it just drops? Maybe it's a ROM issue?

 

[SkinJob]

How exactly is tge ringer volume dropping? Like wrong presses on the volume key? Or it just drops? Maybe it's a ROM issue?

No, it's not a ROM issue. It's probably ususually due to wrong presses on the volume key.

Regardless of what causes the volume change, there should be an inherent way to ensure the volume is on full when a call comes in. This is the basic function of a cell phone, to alert you to calls! It boggles my mind that after x years, I still can't find a solution to this. I recently tried a program that doesn't even attempt to keep the ringer volume at a preset level. Instead, it just turns it to full when a call comes in. Brilliant! Except the stupid thing didn't work at all! It just promised to do that!

 

[Clementine_3]

I use RingGuard and have for a long time, it works. No idea why it isn't working for you. If the volume rocker is hit I get a box asking if I want to change the volume, if I ignore it (or, if it's in my pocket and I don't see it) it just automatically resets the volume to what I have it set for.
The app does work on my non-rooted D4.

 

[SkinJob]

I use RingGuard and have for a long time, it works. No idea why it isn't working for you. If the volume rocker is hit I get a box asking if I want to change the volume, if I ignore it (or, if it's in my pocket and I don't see it) it just automatically resets the volume to what I have it set for.
The app does work on my non-rooted D4.

If you go on the Play Store and read the comments, one of them mentions that the app goes in an infinite loop of popup confirmation boxes, when you turn the volume down all the way down. That's exactly what it's doing on my phone. You can change the confirmation time, and if you set it for; ie. 5 seconds, the box will keep popping up every *five seconds*, if you don't press anything. Now here's where it gets sillier: If you press "NO", it keeps re-asking the same question. And if you press "Yes", you wish to confirm the volume change, well then your volume stays at 0%! You can't win with this silly app! And this is me running it at "high priority", "low priority", with all the settings at their optimum, etc. etc.

I'm imagining the app developer must have been highly stoned, to let this thing out on the market, without even testing it once to see if it works! Or maybe it just doesn't work on HTC phones, I don't know....

I can't say I've tried on a stock OS, but I can say I've tried numerous others when I had a stock OS, and they all had problems working properly.

 

[Clementine_3]

Odd. I have turned my volume all the up and all the way down and in to vibrate, never had a problem on any of my phones. Must be a hit or miss thing? Really strange though.

 

[mikedt]

Are these missed calls from people you know, or are they mainly from numbers you don't recognise? People could be mis-dialling, wrong numbers. They're hanging-up as soon as they hear a strange ringtone they're not expecting, so your phone doesn't even get a chance to ring, however it will show a missed call. Happens to me almost every day.

 

[Parshooter]

I recently downloaded Volume Ace and it seems to work well.

 

[SkinJob]

Are these missed calls from people you know, or are they mainly from numbers you don't recognise? People could be mis-dialling, wrong numbers. They're hanging-up as soon as they hear a strange ringtone they're not expecting, so your phone doesn't even get a chance to ring, however it will show a missed call. Happens to me almost every day.

They're from people I know. I've never gotten a wrong number call. To me, it's just a basic thing, to be able to lock your ringer volume and expect it to stay locked. Should have already been built into the system on day one, really. Instead, with each iteration of a new Android OS, we get sixty more different ways to scroll screens and play with widgets, and still no way to consistently lock the ringer volume!

 

[SkinJob]

I recently downloaded Volume Ace and it seems to work well.

Thanks for the suggestion, as I had not tried that one. But now I did, and... no worky for me. It promised to "prevent ringtone volume changed outside the app". But yet it had no problem letting me manually change the ringtone volume outside the app. And when I call tested, it was indeed a low volume. Inside the app, it stayed full volume!

 

[SkinJob]

UPDATE: After trying many more volume locking apps in the last few days, none of which worked, I finally exhausted all the volume locking apps I could find on the market. So then I took a different tact, and started looking at apps that can create automated profiles. The idea is to forget about locking the volume, and just have the app raise the volume when the phone rings. I tried "Phone Weaver" and "Tasker". Phone Weaver didn't succeed. "Tasker" has a lot more options, and allows you to raise every volume level, when the phone rings. I programmed it to do so, but it didn't work either! Volume stayed the same when the phone rang. I also set it to raise and lower the brightness level to make sure it was actually working when the phone rang. It raised and lowered the brightness of the display when the phone rang, but left the volume intact, even though I had it set to raise every volume going!

It's like my Desire is hell bent on not letting anything mess with its ringer volume! Weird +

 

[chanchan05]

Have you checked with the developers of MIUI about compatibility with those apps? I mean from what I see, MIUI is a pretty extensive ROM, unlike the other ones which are more keen on pure Android experience. There may be compatibility issues.

 

[SkinJob]

Have you checked with the developers of MIUI about compatibility with those apps? I mean from what I see, MIUI is a pretty extensive ROM, unlike the other ones which are more keen on pure Android experience. There may be compatibility issues.

I think you may be right, as I was starting to wonder about that myself. It's a bit confusing, because I have always had no luck with ringer volume lockers on this phone, even when I got it 2 years ago with stock ROM. I figured its got to be the apps that are cheesy, because they each fail in different ways. But when people are telling me "it works for me", then I do have to wonder if there isn't something preventing the volume from being controlled in any way by a 3rd party app. Could possibly be the MIUI XJ ROM (though note, no one else with MIUI has stated this was a problem, and millions have it...), or I don't know, perhaps something to do with the Manu kernel I installed over top.

Either way, I can't speak Chinese so I'm not about to engage with the developers of MIUI and ask them to take the time to look into this problem that may not have anything to do with their ROM and that no one else seems to be having. OTOH, I'm too far into this thing to even think about fooling with another ROM at this point. Looks like I won't find a solution this time.... (if I ever do, I'll post it here in case it helps others).

 

[SkinJob]

Update:

I just discovered this, so I've yet to confirm.... but I just tried an escalating ring app.... and it actually worked on my Desire. I left the phone on low, the app started low and took the volume to max. That means, the volume is/may be controllable on this device, by a 3rd party. Just before this, I started messing about in Superuser, looking at the tons of logs it creates. Turns out, by default, Superuser was not giving full permissions to my apps - specifically the right to make calls and related etc. (Even though I always allow full permission when I install apps!). I set all such.apps to full permissions.

I will try with a ring locker app tomorrow (but even the escalating ring app is actually perfect for my needs!).

In short, it appears the problem did not stem from either MIUI or the Desire. It's a root thang. (Though I never had problems like this before, and it was the same superuser app...).

 

[sweetnisha1]

I have been using smart volume control+ to do this. By setting up the profiles I never have to worry about my phone ringing in lectures/classes.

Might be worth giving it a try?