Help Unidentified alert (vibration and beep) every 5 minutes

[Adi Inbar]

Every 5 minutes exactly, my Galaxy S9 G960U1 running Android 10 vibrates and then gives me a flat-toned beep lasting about half a second. It's not associated with any notifications, toasts, or changes in status bar icons. It happens even with sounds set to Mute, and with Do not disturb and Airplane mode turned on! The only thing that stops the beep is "Mute all sounds", but even then it still vibrates, and of course muting all sounds isn't any sort of solution. The only saving grace is that if I have a headset connected, it only beeps through the headset. Another oddity is that I've checked through every alarm and notification sound available on my phone and it doesn't sound like any of them! I don't recall ever hearing this beep for anything else before.

I've tried all of the following:

• Clearing notifications
• Restarting the phone
• Disabling NFC
• Disabling Accessibility > Advanced Settings > Reminder alerts (it was off to begin with, but I enabled and disabled it)
• In App Notifications, disabling all notifications for every app that allows it
• Disabling everything in Notifications settings except "Do not disturb"
• Installing a notification history app
• Disabling the Google app (suggested in a YouTube video about unknown notifications)
  
• Clearing the cache partition

Additional information:

• I haven't installed any new apps or system updates or made any configuration changes recently (except the above mentioned notification history app I installed to troubleshoot this, which didn't help). In fact, this started happening while I was in bed, this morning.
• I have "Don't auto-update apps" set in the Play store, and haven't updated anything in the last 3 days
• The 5 minute interval is based on when the phone was last started, not according to the clock, e.g. I was getting the vibration and beep on the hour mark, then at :05, :10, :15, :20, etc., but after restarting the phone at 5:05 it was happening at 5:07, 5:12, 5:17, etc. I verified that the first beep always comes 2 minutes (exactly 120 seconds) after the lock screen is displayed, and then exactly every 5 minutes, to the second, thereafter.

I understand that a factory reset would very likely get rid of the problem, but I don't consider that a solution, that's giving up without a solution, and the total time cost would be more than I can afford right now, so I really hope someone knows what's going on or at least has some idea of where to look.

 

[puppykickr]

This is a device that came out in 2018.
Very likely that it is at its limits for useful life.

 

[Fox Mulder]

This is a device that came out in 2018.
Very likely that it is at its limits for useful life.

Not necessarily. My S9 has no issues and is still a very viable device.
Here is an old thread discussing a similar problem, not an S9 but might be relevant-
https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/notification-sound-every-5-minutes.2546262/

edit- I do see you have disabled Accessibility alerts so it probably isn't that. Perhaps you already found that thread.
Two things you can try short of a factory reset-
- Start the phone in safe mode and see if it still happens. If it doesn't, it's almost certainly caused by one of your installed apps so you have to figure out which one.
- Wipe the cache partition from the recovery menu. This can sometimes fix things and will NOT reset the phone, just make sure you select the proper option from that menu.

 

[puppykickr]

The device is still getting old quick.
2018 was four years ago, and the average battery life is what- 2 to 4 years?
And as these are devices with batteries that are excessively difficult to replace, it is obvious that this is not meant to happen.

So, even if a device is functioning well, when the battery is gone the device goes with it.

The battery dying is inevitable, it will happen, and after 3+ years it is past the time to be considering a new device- especially if there are now other issues- even if the battery has not become one yet.

Unfortunately, this is how it is with these devices.

We all get attached and want to use them as long as possible, but it never seems to be long enough.

Normally a battery will die or else some physical damage will be the end of it, but sometimes a strange thing may happen instead.

Perhaps there is a solution to the immediate issue, but that would not change the fact that the device is going to be four years old in March.