Alarm clock failing

[Tari]

My alarms on my Fascinate no longer go off at the right times. Should my phone go to sleep (screen off, etc.) for an extended period of time, the clock no longer updates time, and my alarms will not function.


As a temporary workaround, I've downloaded and installed an app (Load Monitor) that prevents my phone from going into a deep sleep mode. This has been working, but of course, it comes at the cost of some battery life, so I'd like to find a better solution, if possible.


While I know this issue exists for a handful of people across a number of phones, I still don't really understand what's going on.

Also a bit curious if anyone else has had this sort of issue, yet. I ran into it on my third or fourth day with the phone, but was out of town until recently and couldn't really do much about it.


Any help would be appreciated.


-Tari

 

[egg_head]

Do you have any kind of third party task manager on your phone?

[tapatalk on android]

 

[Tari]

Do you have any kind of third party task manager on your phone?

[tapatalk on android]

I do, now, but it was installed after the issue manifested, and I removed it for a few days to check if it was the problem. It's Advanced Task Killer, by the by, and I don't have it auto-run or auto-kill anything. I open it up every now and then to kill Skype and Photobucket and whatnot, as well as itself.


I've heard of Android devices not being able to update time while in sleep (or deep sleep?), but I've not seen anyone else have this problem with the Fascinate yet, so I'm not really sure what's going on.

 

[Johnly]

Never had that problem. Using android for a year, fascinate for 2 weeks. Can you be specific....what were the days of week the clock was set for, am or pm, when you set it did the alarm say (specifically that it will go off so many hours from now?) and did it not. ATK is bad, your fascinate has a more intuitive samsung widget for managing task, just use that would be my recomendation. the alarm has never failed me. Curious to see what the deal was.

 

[Tari]

I'm all for removing ATK, as it doesn't really provide any needed extra functionality over the built-in task manager.


The alarms are set to go off daily, at 11:45 AM, 12:00, 12:15, and 12:40 PM.

I also have an alarm set in the evening at 10:30 PM.



If the phone is in sleep without Load Monitor running (the app with the 'wake lock' option), none of those alarms will go off unless the phone happens to be awake at the right time.


I've also tested it with some randomly set alarms (mostly within a few minutes from current time), and the ones that are set to go off within a minute or two usually work, but if it's much more than ten or twenty minutes away, things start getting iffy.



For the time being, I've uninstalled ATK and Load Monitor and restarted my phone to double-check that it wasn't ATK causing the issue, though I highly doubt that it was.



Some relevant topics:

-Android Forums: Alarm won't work!
-Issue 9524 (this isn't the only posted issue in regards to this problem, but I don't have the URL to the longer ones on hand)



I'll try grabbing the new update from Verizon, too, as I've been putting it off due to not wanting to deal with re-rooting.



Thanks for any help,
Tari





edit:

Just as a side-note, the apps I have removed (they're backed up by Titanium Backup) are these:

Email 2.1 update1
Blockbuster 0.2
City ID
Bing 1.00...
Voice Commands VSuite 4.0
V CAST Videos
V CAST Music
Backup Assistant
3G Mobile Hotspot
MobileIM 3.0.3.3
VZ Navigator
V CAST Tones

I don't think any of those are causing the problem, but they do make it annoying to get the OTA update, haha.

 

[shazbonk]

This exact issue has been happening to me recently, exactly as you describe it. I've only noticed it for the alarms that I have set to wake me up, which corresponds to the deep sleep part that you mentioned. When I picked up my phone this morning I literally saw the time jump from about 5 am to the current time, which was about 7: 30. I have autokiller installed but I'm going to try removing to see if that fixes it. I don't think I had this issue with my original fascinate, but I had to exchange it and it seems like this one has been doing it since I got it.

 

[Tari]

I grabbed the OTA update last night (ended up having to reinstall apps with root explorer, so it took a while longer than expected), and uninstalled ATK and Load Monitor.


Phone's actually been a bit snappier than before, but I don't really know if that's due to the update or something that happened during my reroot and removal of the same bloatware as before.


In any case, my alarms appear to have went off this morning. I'll have to test it a bit more thoroughly to know for sure, though, as I have four morning alarms, and I can only recall two of them actually activating.



@shaz:

I wonder if it's a hardware issue? I really hope not. The phone's working fine in every possible way except the alarm, and I really don't want to go through redownloading all the dozens of apps I've got installed, hah.

 

[shazbonk]

Yeah, I'd rather not go through that again as well, if I even could. I'll uninstall autokiller and test tonight. Another possible solution could be using a different alarm app from the market, if that doesn't work.

 

[Tari]

Upon further testing, the removal of ATK and Load Monitor, and grabbing the OTA update have not resolved the problem.


The time is once again not updating consistently, and when it finally does update and the alarm time has already gone by, my phone's screen turns on (most likely to display the alarm), but no alarm actually comes on (as it's well passed the set time). The screen stays on until I turn it off manually.

The screen staying on is the reason the latter two of my four morning alarms managed to actually go off. The phone was stuck on from the first two missed alarms, so the time was updating properly for the last two.




The only other things that have been autostarting on the phone since the problem appeared are battery monitoring apps, and I'm rather doubtful that they're causing the problem.



Just out of curiosity, how long does this phone normally retain power in standby mode? My phone barely uses any power while it's off, at least without Load Monitor running. I could probably leave it unplugged for a week or so (without using it), and still have some juice left.



--------


@shaz:

As far as I know, alternative alarm apps have similar issues with the time-skipping. If the time doesn't update at all, then none of the alarms work. If the time updates sporadically (every couple minutes or so), then most alarm apps will activate once they realize the set time has already passed.

Sometimes that's too late, though.


------





Going to reinstall Load Monitor for the time being, since I can't really deal with unreliable alarms.


Also found out I have 130-ish apps installed. Geez, I didn't realize I'd downloaded that much in the span of two or three weeks.



I would still appreciate any insight to a possible fix (that doesn't involve Load Monitor).

 

[douggyfern]

Do you have a third party "clock widget"? Once I removed the digital clock widget I downloaded mine stopped doing it. Also with Task Killlers and the built in Task Manager I had to make sure Daily Briefing, the Clock and the Calendar were all "ignored" and I haven't had that problem ever since. For some odd reason it seemed to mostly be the donwnloaded clock widget I had - I don't know if that was the problem though. The widget kept time just fine but I also noticed the status bar clock "jump" a few times to keep up.

Once I downloaded Rhythm Task Manager and set it to ignore Daily Briefing, Clock, Phone and Calendar, the phone seemed to stop shutting down the alarm all together.

 

[Tari]

Yeah, not running any third party task managers anymore, and the built-in one doesn't auto-kill the clock, to my knowledge (or everyone would be having this problem).




I'm a bit doubtful that it's a clock widget problem, but I'll uninstall all of my clock widgets just to check. I do have one clock widget that isn't very stable, but I'm fairly certain that only matters if I've actually put it on my homescreens somewhere, which I never do.

In any case, I'll test it without any of those widgets overnight.

 

[anon(40232)]

It has to be something you installed. I have my alarm to wake me up in the morning, and it has gone off every time.

 

[NOsquid]

*subscribed*

I haven't woken up a couple of times lately, not like me to sleep through an alarm. I have the digital clock widget. It could also be my rubber skin drowning out the sound when the phone is on its back though.

 

[NOsquid]

Do you have a third party "clock widget"? Once I removed the digital clock widget I downloaded mine stopped doing it. Also with Task Killlers and the built in Task Manager I had to make sure Daily Briefing, the Clock and the Calendar were all "ignored" and I haven't had that problem ever since. For some odd reason it seemed to mostly be the donwnloaded clock widget I had - I don't know if that was the problem though. The widget kept time just fine but I also noticed the status bar clock "jump" a few times to keep up.

Once I downloaded Rhythm Task Manager and set it to ignore Daily Briefing, Clock, Phone and Calendar, the phone seemed to stop shutting down the alarm all together.

This one?

Digital Clock Widget - Android app on AppBrain

 

[Tari]

@Egz: Yeah, I'm inclined to agree with you, since most Fascinate users don't seem to have this problem and since I've installed 130 some-odd apps--there're probably one or two that aren't working perfectly in that bunch.

---

After removing all the clock apps I had installed, the alarms went off without a hitch. It's only been one night, so I can't say for certain that it's working, but it's a good start, anyway.

The only one of those apps that I actually use is Digital Clock Widget (Maize), so I've reinstalled it to test.



I'll be pretty happy if it's just a clock app that's causing the problems. Nice find, douggy, hopefully it solves the issue.

 

[azdmelani]

My alarm woke me up this morning with no issues- I have the task killer installed, but no clock widget. My money is on one of those.

 

[NOsquid]

It's probably the Maize one if it's a clock widget, that's the only one I have. Dammit!

 

[Tari]

It's probably the Maize one if it's a clock widget, that's the only one I have. Dammit!

Yeah, reinstalled it and failed an alarm an hour later. Not sure if it's limited to just the Maize widget, but ugh. That's annoying.

It's a rather nice widget.


I hope it's only that one widget. I'd like to have some sort of clock widget on my homescreen.



Thanks for all the help, guys. I don't think I ever would have guessed it was a clock widget causing the problems. I don't understand what it's doing that's causing the clock to stop updating while in standby, but at least now I know what to uninstall.

Going to test a few other clock widgets in a little bit.

 

[NOsquid]

Yeah its a nice looking clock for sure, sent them an email hope they look into it.

To be clear: no third party task killer of any kind, right? I don't have one installed either.

Kind of relieved, thought I might be turning into a bum

 

[Tari]

Yeah its a nice looking clock for sure, sent them an email hope they look into it.

To be clear: no third party task killer of any kind, right? I don't have one installed either.

Kind of relieved, thought I might be turning into a bum

Yeah, I uninstalled Advanced Task Killer a couple days ago, and I've got no other third party task manager installed.


I hope they fix it, because I really want to use that app. Maybe we should send them a link to this thread, haha.

I was worried that my alarms weren't effective anymore, so I kept adding more and praying that I wouldn't sleep through them. Then I realized my alarms just weren't going off.