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Iphone alarm glitch - not ringing

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cybergeo3

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 24, 2008
3
0
I have recently noticed my alarm not going off in the morning on a seemingly random basis. It happened this morning, I did notice then when I finally woke up and checked the phone, I had locked the phone with a game app open. I thought this might be the issue but I tested it. Set an alarm, left an app open and locked the phone, the alarm went off. I checked, the ringer was not on silent.

Has anyone had any issues with the alarm not going off? I use this as my primary alarm, so when it does not ring it is kind of a problem.

3G iphone, 16gb, 2.1 software, not jailbroken.

Thanks for any insight.
 
K

KC2

macrumors regular
Feb 29, 2008
225
0
cybergeo3 said:
Has anyone had any issues with the alarm not going off? I use this as my primary alarm, so when it does not ring it is kind of a problem.

3G iphone, 16gb, 2.1 software, not jailbroken.
Click to expand...

Same scenario happened for me this morning. I still don't understand why my alarm didn't go off. Fortunately it's my secondary alarm, so it's not a huge issue, but this is bringing back bad memories of my late Windows Mobile 6 Treo not setting off alerts, missing alarms, etc.

I'm trying to remember if I had an app open when I unlocked ("slide to unlock") the phone, but that was too early (2 hours ago). Anyway, bumping your post, and hopefully someone can help us out!

By the way, I don't believe it matters if the phone is on vibrate or ring - the alarm goes off either way (great feature IMO).
 
C

cybergeo3

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 24, 2008
3
0
Ok, it is definitely a problem. Here are the scenarios I've tried, all while the ringer is turned on and volume up (though this should not matter), and ensuring no applications were open:

-deleted all alarms, set a new alarm for 6:20am repeating weekdays, worked the first day, failed on 2 subsequent days.

-had a saved alarm set for 6:20 am repeating weekdays which did not go off. set a one-time alarm for 8:25 pm, successfully rang.

-delete all saved alarms, add a new alarm for 6:20 am repeating on weekdays, did not go off the next morning.

I am setting secondary alarms to be awake when the iphone alarm should be ringing to ensure I am simply not sleeping through it. I think the glitch may be with the repeating alarms. I suggest even if you don't use your iphone as an alarm, try it out, see what the results are, I think apple has a serious glitch in the software they need to correct asap. Hopefully someone from Apple reads this. It is very difficult troubleshooting an alarm problem which happens sporadically.
 
K

KC2

macrumors regular
Feb 29, 2008
225
0
cybergeo3 said:
Hopefully someone from Apple reads this. It is very difficult troubleshooting an alarm problem which happens sporadically.
Click to expand...

No kidding :mad:

Mine have been working as of late, but I don't remember changing any settings. I may have rebooted the iPhone a couple times since it stopped working, but I'm not sure. I wish we had some insight as to what the hell is going on.

My alarm is set for weekdays, BTW. My weekend one did go off Saturday as planned, but I turned it off Sunday, so can't say if that would have worked. Really frustrating.
 
D

darwiniandude

macrumors member
Mar 20, 2008
82
21
same here

GF's non jailbroken 2.1 16gb black has done exactly this, a few times. Might I suggest trying the following:

Set 5 weekly alarms for each day of the week.

Her phone was also set to weekdays.

I've not had this issue myself with my white 16gb 2.1 (just recently jailbroken for PDANet) but mine is set for Monday through Saturday.

Hope we can narrow this down.
 
M

maiden16tiger

macrumors member
Jul 2, 2008
79
0
wow, i thought i was the only one...

fricking alarm almost made me late to school.

although i thought that it was me that turned it off, and went to sleep again.
but i guess it wasnt me.. dumb glitch, =[
 
TomyDingo

TomyDingo

macrumors member
Jul 11, 2008
48
3
Austin, TX
My alarm stopped working too. I decided to just set the timer instead but that didn't go off either! I eventually just went back to my desk radio clock because that's more reliable. Anyone know of a way to fix the alarm issue on the phone?
 
C

cybergeo3

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 24, 2008
3
0
darwiniandude's recommendation is what i have been using since, and it has not caused a problem. I set a repeating alarm for each day of the week, so 5 total alarms. it's annoying because i like to set one-off alarms, and i have to scroll through a list to find them, but it does work.

I still think this is a sloppy mistake, but at least there's a workaround.
 
R

return7

macrumors 6502
Oct 8, 2008
486
1
rebooting my phone seemed to help when this happened to me a couple of days ago. was on a weekend so it wasn't a huge deal..still sucked though.
 
A

Archangel959

macrumors newbie
Feb 24, 2007
16
0
cybergeo3 said:
darwiniandude's recommendation is what i have been using since, and it has not caused a problem. I set a repeating alarm for each day of the week, so 5 total alarms. it's annoying because i like to set one-off alarms, and i have to scroll through a list to find them, but it does work.

I still think this is a sloppy mistake, but at least there's a workaround.
Click to expand...

I'm not convinced that this is an absolute solution. Keep an eye on it. I have never used the repeating alarms, because my college schedule keeps me getting up at different times everyday. So I basically set a new alarm every night. It will randomly miss alarms, sometimes I even set 2 or 3 because I know that it misses and all of them miss. I'm getting pretty annoyed with this, but hopefully we can come to a conclusion.

BTW, has anyone noticed that the sounds sometimes dont work on other applications as well?
 
c-Row

c-Row

macrumors 65816
Jan 10, 2006
1,193
1
Germany
Apparently the latest iPhone software updates haven't fixed this problem - I was two and a half hours late for work today thanks to this.

Strangely enough, it wasn't simply the alarm not ringing at all, but it rang two hours later than usual. I checked the settings, but they are still set to 6:20 AM rather than 8:40 AM.

Good thing I work at the PC help desk, so the words "strange behaviour" and "technical equipment" go hand in hand in my department and I didn't have much of an explanation to do. :D
 
C

ComedyGuy

macrumors newbie
May 13, 2008
3
0
This junk made me miss my snorkeling reservation! :mad:

This is a very annoying glitch because I use my iPhone as my only alarm. I'm glad I'm not crazy and other people are having this issue also. My alarm actually still goes off but it goes off once I wake up and check the phone. I'll push the home button then I hear and see the alarm. By then the phone is sleeping itself and just wants to rub it in because it didn't have anything to do today so it's like, "oh yeah, wake up". Jerk.

Anywho, I have noticed that it only happens when I don't close the alarm app before the phone goes to sleep mode. Now, it doesn't always happen when I don't exit the app, but when it does happen, I noticed that pattern.

I've had this problem since 1.1.4 and I'm currently using 3.0, it's always been jailbroken. There has to be a way to fix this bug. I wonder if Apple even knows about it...

Any info on if or when this problem will be recognized and dealt with would be great. Thanks!
 
K

KC2

macrumors regular
Feb 29, 2008
225
0
@ComedyGuy,

I actually haven't had the issue again since I last posted in October 2008. I feel like they may have fixed it in one of the OS 2.X updates. Do you think the JB has anything to do with it, maybe keeping some of the old settings?

I had a friend who had his iPhone 3G JB'd throughout OS 2.X, decided he wanted a clean slate for OS 3.0, so he 'wiped'/restored the phone. When he upgraded to OS 3.0, he still had some traces of JB left. For example, he had the percentage battery indicator along with the graphical battery indicator in the top right corner, a feature supposedly reserved only for 3GS (and some JB'd phones, if you enable the feature, I think?).

Either way, I'd be interested to hear if anyone is still having this alarm issue also. Good luck!
 
D

daxbrady

macrumors newbie
Jul 31, 2009
1
0
3gs iphone misses alarms also

this is really a problem as this is my primary alarm. I had a blackberry for 38 months and it never let me down like this. This iphone has let me down on a random basis just like you guys are describing. It has nothing to do with having an app open as mine is always at the home screen when i plug it in at night. Apple is going to have to fix this issue or i'm goin back to Blackberry as much as i hate to do it.
 
K

KC2

macrumors regular
Feb 29, 2008
225
0
daxbrady said:
this is really a problem as this is my primary alarm. I had a blackberry for 38 months and it never let me down like this. This iphone has let me down on a random basis just like you guys are describing. It has nothing to do with having an app open as mine is always at the home screen when i plug it in at night. Apple is going to have to fix this issue or i'm goin back to Blackberry as much as i hate to do it.
Click to expand...

Certainly none of us want you to have to go back to BB, but I definitely can relate to the frustration. Since my post(s) almost 10 months ago now, I haven't really had this issue; it's irritating that we can't single out any specific cause.

One alternative, though annoying to do every night, is to just set the timer (assuming we can trust those) for X hours. I've never had a timer fail on me (yet).
 
T

Tunnelrunner

macrumors regular
May 9, 2009
174
0
In the past, I would occassionally have this problem
of set alarms not going off. It didn't happen a lot but when it did, it was troubling. Ever since the last few OS updates, this hasn't happened since :)knock on wood).

One thing I did back then (and still do now) to combat this problem is a daily reset of my iPhone -- preferably right before I go to bed. Ironically, I have a daily alarm (set for 9:00 PM) to remind me.
 
H

henhowc

macrumors regular
Jun 12, 2007
239
3
Los Angeles, CA
Experienced this same glitch a few times. At first I thought I was just snoozing through my alarm.

But this morning, my alarm was across the room and there is no way I could have gotten up to snooze it. Its set to ring at 8am every weekday. Today it skipped that and randomly rang at 9:15am. :mad:
 
J

jmsait19

macrumors 6502
Jan 26, 2004
378
0
MO
I have this happen randomly too.

I notice when my battery is low the alarm doesn't work as well. Perhaps the phone goes into a deeper sleep to preserve that last little bit of battery?

Other than that, it seems totally random. I'll set 3 different alarms for three different times and sometimes none go off. But when I wake my phone they all go off.

I've had to resort to a standard alarm clock, whose alarm tone isn't nearly as soothing as the iphones...
 
I

icewing

macrumors 6502
Jun 19, 2008
375
0
St Louis
This happened to me this morning - battery had a good charge, so that's not it.

I turned the phone on by pushing the Home button - it gave the "email received" tone, THEN the alarm sound started. I'm wondering if this happens when an email notification happens right before the alarm starts? :confused:
 
W

whtevaisgd

macrumors newbie
Oct 6, 2009
3
0
:(

it happened to mine this morning. i think this is the first time it happened. mine is iPhone first gen, jailbroken. Battery was good, no apps were opened. Alarm was set to go off weekday at 8am. Because it chose not to ring this morning, I was late to work. DAMN.
 
M

martuk

macrumors newbie
Jun 23, 2009
24
0
This has been happening to me the past 5/6 days. I've had 2G & 3G both jailbroken and not, and 3G factory unlocked up to and including s/w 3.1 with no problem I was aware of. I now have factory unlocked 3GS and have this problem. My phone is, and always has been, plugged in to charge everynight.

Whats the possibilty of it being an app? The ones I have added between me knowing the alarm worked and not working are,

Yell (web app I think)
WiFi Photo
Aera
Google Translate homepage bookmark link
Juiced
Bump

Anyone else have any of these?
 
W

whtevaisgd

macrumors newbie
Oct 6, 2009
3
0
it happened again this Monday. It didnt feel like ringing again. this is getting very annoying. someone got it fixed yet? is it springboard? winterboard? Urgh!!!!! :mad:
 
B

baerbaer

macrumors newbie
Oct 14, 2009
1
0
Vanishes right before my eyes!

It's my ONLY alarm so nearly missing school today was a problem because I'M the teacher!!!

I've done nothing funny or funky with my phone. My use is boring compared to most. So why does it act up now?

I can actually watch the Alarm Time vanish off my screen right before my eyes! I am waiting for a call Thursday from Apple and post the results then.
 
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