Help Alarm won't work! Please Help (Time stops updating when phone sleeps...)

[niteshkumar_2222]

I have got exactly the same problem. Alarm works absolutely fine when used within short interval of, say 2 - 3 hrs or 8 - 9 hrs when phone is in constant use. But fails to go off when phone is idle for more than 6 hrs, specially during night. PLEASE let me know if you find any solution...

And now I have a work around. There is something called Android deep sleep bug which is the cause of error in alarm functionality. When the phone is in deep sleep the OS does not wake up to raise the alarm. The solution is there is a parameter called wake lock, just has to be changed to not suspend. I am not an Android programmer so I installed a free app 'Load Monitor', which has an option of wake Suspend, just tick it and it will not allow your phone to deep sleep. It is pretty useless app but then your alarm clock will be reliable. This app does consume some battery, so I kill it when no alarm is required, and enable it again before setting the alarm and keep it on till alarm rings and I am awake. All the functionality of alarm works flawlessly.

 

[niteshkumar_2222]

There is something called Android deep sleep bug which is the cause of error in alarm functionality. When the phone is in deep sleep the OS does not wake up to raise the alarm. The solution is there is a parameter called wake lock, just has to be changed to not suspend. I am not an Android programmer so I installed a free app 'Load Monitor', which has an option of wake Suspend, just tick it and it will not allow your phone to deep sleep. It is pretty useless app but then your alarm clock will be reliable. This app does consume some battery, so I kill it when no alarm is required, and enable it again before setting the alarm and keep it on till alarm rings and I am awake. All the functionality of alarm works flawlessly.

 

[Nora]

I thought I was going mad. Time/alarm clock seems like such a simple piece of functionality - why isn't it working properly in my phone? I've only had my Samsung Galaxy S a few days, good thing I had the weekend to play with it, otherwise I'd have been late for work this morning!

Has anyone tried what niteshkumar_2222 suggested and down loaded the Load Monitor? Does it work?

Darkplek have you sorted it out on your phone?

 

[Darkplek]

Mine now seems to work every time, which is good, but I've no idea why it didn't in the first place because I don't think I ever did anything differently... ... Still bad that it's so temperamental.

But maybe this will help somebody...

- I'm still using stock firmware, android 2.1, not rooted.
- I'm also using the default alarm clock program.
- I have it set to repeat every weekday, but if i restart the phone the icon goes away so i go back in and turn it on again... Usually I change the time every day anyway, so it gets reset.
- I'm using Snooze, and a 5 minute Smart Alarm. Alarm type Melody, with the volume just above minimum (it's quite loud otherwise, I'm a light sleeper).
- I'm NOT using Automatic, Network provided time values.
- I'm also NOT putting the phone into airplane mode overnight (This might be a likely culprit i think...)
- My phone is on silent overnight.

With all these settings, my phone seems to work every time. The smart alarm kicks in 5 minutes before the time i set, and then the real alarm kicks in and annoys the crap out of me if I haven't turned it off by then. So either the key is in those settings somewhere, or it's luck, or i'm not going to bed early enough for the phone to fall into a deep sleep mode xD but that's probably not it.

Sorry I can't offer anything specific, but like i say, maybe try the settings above, or compare them to your own, see if anything works for you. If you figure out what is different, let me know

 

[larryccf]

I thought I was going mad. Time/alarm clock seems like such a simple piece of functionality - why isn't it working properly in my phone? ............................

I'm in total agreement - mine, after working fine for 10 days, the past 5 days it has failed to sound off 3 times

do i need to carry a checklist of all these "adjustments" we need to make to get simple features to work??

 

[Nora]

- I'm also NOT putting the phone into airplane mode overnight (This might be a likely culprit i think...)

No, I don't put it in this mode at all so I don't think it's that.

or i'm not going to bed early enough for the phone to fall into a deep sleep mode xD but that's probably not it.

Haha! Don't think it's that either - I'm a night owl.

Thanks for that run down. I did take it off the Automatic, Network provided time thingie and so far, although it's only been about two hours, I don't notice there being a time difference when I nudge it awake when usually theres a minute or two of difference. The real test will be tonight though. Fingers crossed!

Btw Darkplek, I found another thread you were on about the (shite) clock and I've added a comment to -> Issue 9974 - android - Time stops updating whilst phone is asleep (causing alarm clock to fail). - Project Hosting on Google Code

I hope they'll be able to sort it. And soon cos this is insane! I know my sister, who has the iPhone, is going to rub this in! *sigh*

 

[Darkplek]

I'm in total agreement - mine, after working fine for 10 days, the past 5 days it has failed to sound off 3 times

do i need to carry a checklist of all these "adjustments" we need to make to get simple features to work??

Also couldn't agree more.. =\ If it was halfway decent the bloody thing should work no matter what you do short of dropping it in the sink or turning the alarm volume off, lol.

Bad enough that it can't work when the phone is off, let alone when it's on.

 

[__nocach]

I had the same problem and what helped me was the upgrating of firmware. It also explains why this problem appears only in small set of devices. Samsung starts to produce devices with more and more recent firmware. So, only devices that have this special version of firmware can have issue of not updating time, or unpossibility to input something in input field under some conditions.

To upgrade firmware of your phone just connect it to the computer and using Kies update it.

Warning: it will delete all previous applications.

Good luck).

 

[Darkplek]

Firmware is a safe bet to help, but I can't comment because mine randomly started working before i upgraded the firmware (and continues to do so).

Just thought I should say, I upgraded from JF3 to firmware JM1, and it did not delete anything

I had the same problem and what helped me was the upgrating of firmware. It also explains why this problem appears only in small set of devices. Samsung starts to produce devices with more and more recent firmware. So, only devices that have this special version of firmware can have issue of not updating time, or unpossibility to input something in input field under some conditions.

To upgrade firmware of your phone just connect it to the computer and using Kies update it.

Warning: it will delete all previous applications.

Good luck).

 

[__nocach]

Firmware is a safe bet to help, but I can't comment because mine randomly started working before i upgraded the firmware (and continues to do so).

Just thought I should say, I upgraded from JF3 to firmware JM1, and it did not delete anything

Well, maybe it depends on "seriousness" of the update. But all my data on sd card was not touched.

 

[bozzer]

Mine works fine, but it's never in a deep sleep so it's no surprise. The best thing I have found is that I charge it overnight and there is a setting in applications -> development called stay awake. Using this the screen does not go off - just tap on the clock to open the desktop clock and touch the dim fullscreen clock. Hardly any light and keeps the clock up-to-date. Jobs a good'un.

 

[Nora]

The best thing I have found is that I charge it overnight and there is a setting in applications -> development called stay awake.

Hmm... I'll have to give that a try. Does it deplete the battery much?

My alarm seems to have sorted itself out too. I turned off the option for the Automatic, Network provided time but thats all I did. That seemed to do the trick. Occasionally the time still lags but not as much as it used to. But even so, for the past few days the alarm clock has gone off without a hitch.

 

[bozzer]

Hmm... I'll have to give that a try. Does it deplete the battery much?

I'm sure 'Stay Awake' is a feature when it's charging so it won't be available when it's running off the battery.

 

[Nora]

I'm sure 'Stay Awake' is a feature when it's charging so it won't be available when it's running off the battery.

Yeah, I realised that I read it wrong after I posted

Thanks for the heads up though!

 

[kingkerna]

Does anyone know of an app that will wake the phone up when it is switched off?

 

[bozzer]

Does anyone know of an app that will wake the phone up when it is switched off?

As far as I know when the unit is off, the CPU ect are completly void of power. The power switch is a trigger signal to wake up various voltage rails.
Because of this there is no CPU to 'run' a program on. If you could hack the crap out of it, there might be a low level BIOS that has a wake-up timer, but that's a seriously long shot.

 

[ykphuah]

on HTC Magic facing the same issues, will try the automatic network provided off.

Another thing that I noticed I changed is turning off "Enable Always On Mobile" few days ago, wonder if the "network provided" time is considered "Mobile".

 

[ykphuah]

Turning off Automatic Network Provided Time worked for 2 days, and yesterday, the problem happens again!

 

[tari]

...

Has anyone tried what niteshkumar_2222 suggested and down loaded the Load Monitor? Does it work?

...

Just thought I'd pop by and mention that I tried niteshkumar's suggestion, and it appears to have worked on my Samsung Fascinate (Verizon's Galaxy S phone).

I haven't tested it thoroughly yet (only been two days so far), but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Prior to applying this fix, I'd tried resetting the alarms and not using network provided values for time, and neither seemed to do anything to resolve the issue.


I found that if I programmed an alarm and put the phone into suspend mode (hitting the power button), as long as the alarm was set within a few minutes, it would work. If the alarm was set an hour or more away, however, it would fail to wake from suspend mode.

So far, the Load Monitor app seems to be preventing it from going into deep sleep and killing the time updates (which appears to be a fairly common bug, as it turns out). It hasn't affected my battery life much, and I'll gladly trade an hour of web-browsing on my phone for reliable alarms.



I'm interested to know if this fix works for other people, as well. This is a huge irritation, and I really hope a 2.2 upgrade sorts the entire thing out officially.


I'll be out of town for a bit, so apologies if I don't respond for a while.

 

[nickthephreak]

... I installed a free app 'Load Monitor', which has an option of wake Suspend, just tick it and it will not allow your phone to deep sleep. It is pretty useless app but then your alarm clock will be reliable. This app does consume some battery, so I kill it when no alarm is required, and enable it again before setting the alarm and keep it on till alarm rings and I am awake. All the functionality of alarm works flawlessly.

I had exactly the same problem after about 1,5 weeks after I got the phone (worked flawlessly the first days, then suddenly it didn't anymore). That's when I started to monitor this thread more closely.

niteshkumar_2222's workaround did the trick for me as well, though it's only been one night so far

BTW: Simply switching off the network time update didn't change anything for me.


Cheers
Nick

 

[fire_chick]

This is the best thread I found on the alarm problem (which I am having). It didn't work on day 1 and 2, then I changed it to use 'smart alarm' and it worked for 3 weeks that way, so I had thought that was the app bug (had not read any forums about it). However, randomly now after 3 weeks of working OK, it did not go off on the past 3 days. I do notice a large difference in time when I wake up the phone, between the time on the screen and the small time at the top ... but to me the alarm should not be based on a screen widget, but rather the clock in the BIOS ??

In any case, I hate hate hate the idea of downloading and running an application just to make the bloody alarm work - that seems a desperate workaround to me. Since no one has posted to this thread since June, does anyone know if firmware updates will really cure the deep sleep bug (if that is what it is) -- because yes, the problem only happens when the alarm is set for a long time in the future (though not always - sometimes it works - like for 3 weeks straight !).

My firmware says 2.1 update 1 and OS build is ECLAIR.I9000BUIG2 . It is a French SFR provided Galaxy. Bought it in September.

GPS never seems to work by itself either - the 2 map applications that came with the phone worked once in France when I was on the 3G network but never works when I am roaming and do not want to incur the 3G charges. Which is about the time I would find GPS the most useful - in a place I do not know. If I go to Maps and ask for My Location, it never finds me - always says my location is temporarily unavailable -- should I really need to turn on data roaming for this to work ?? There is a widget that shows the GPS is on and when the map app comes up, the GPS icon is there on the top, but it never gets a lock on me. Is rooting the only way to resolve this ?

If I should update the firmware - will I need to buy a PC ?? Or can any of this be done via Mac because I do not have a PC and everyone who posts about updating firmware seems to mention doing it via some PC application (which also seems full of bugs).

Thanks in advance for any insight.

 

[nickthephreak]

Here's an update on my phone, because since I last wrote, my setup changed:

A few days after posting the last entry my GPS stopped working, so I had to factory reset my Galaxy S. Since I already lost all my settings and had to start from scratch, I decided to give Ryan's One Click Lag Fix a try (usually I'm a bit hesitant with things like these). Not only did I see quite an increase in phone speed but also since then my Alarm clock worked flawlessly without any other app keeping my phone from deep sleep (which quite drained the battery).

So now I've had the second full week, with a working Alarm clock. Can't say how the next week will be, but so far I'm happy

BTW: My phone runs on stock firmware 2.1update1 ECLAIRE.NEJG3

Hope that helps a bit.

 

[fire_chick]

Well mine worked for 2 weeks too - that is the thing that is so disconcerting ! Never sure exactly what the real cause is - and now it is working again (no setting changes) so I imagine it could randomly stop working again ...

Since it appears 2.2 is now indeed out, I would like to try that before the lag fix - but I have yet to find out if anyone knows how to upgrade the phone from a Mac as I do not have PC to load Kies.

 

[spark001uk]

As for the auto time update setting, I find with galaxy s (all firmware builds so far) it may as well be unchecked as it doesn't work when it's on anyway! Tried all sorts, purposely set time wrong, turned phone off and on, leave it a day or two, never corrects itself. Checked with carrier, time signal transmission is fully supported. Let's hope samsung's dismal customer support and delay with the froyo release puts everything right when they finally release it, they'll get shot down in flames if it doesn't!!

 

[justinclarke]

FYI this is the same as:

http://androidforums.com/htc-hero/48097-alarm-clock-failed-me-again-today.html

It also has linked to bug reports at Google. Hopefully someone will fix this soon.