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Mystery Vibration No Text, No mail, No notification, Screen stays black

chakraj

chakraj

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 6, 2008
1,285
10
So Cal
Every once in a while my phone will vibrate (its always on vibrate) just like when I get a text message. But there is no text, or alert or alarm?? Now I know people can send a text that goes right to your phone and does not actually show up as a text, its a type of attack to gain access to your device.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any ideas?
 
Last edited:
I've had this happen on my 4S since day one. Strangely, it doesn't happen on my 3Gs which is running on the same backup and iOS version.
 
Uh oh. iPhone people are experiencing what Blackberry people have been experiencing for years AKA phantom vibration.

I don't know. I don't have this issue. I can't feel the vibrate half the time anyways.
 
I usually cant feel it either, but when its on my desk or table it makes a big racket.

I found this;

In another type of attack, an attacker could hijack a phone by sending a type of SMS message called a control message over the GSM network to a victim's phone that is using a Wi-Fi network and then use special toolkits to sniff the Wifi traffic looking for the victim's e-mail log-in information.
 
Shot in the dark, but do you have any server-side email rules set up? When I used Exchange, I had a rule that would take certain incoming messages and move them to a folder, and mark them as read. My iPhone would buzz for the incoming message, but when I checked it there were no new emails. Took me a while to figure out what was happening.
 
Do you think it could be junk mail, going into the junk folder?

Nope, my last junk mail was this morning??
 
Maybe you guys are experiencing some sort phantom vibration as the poster above said. I feel that sometimes in my pocket but there isn't anything. It also could be other mail coming in that's not in your inbox. I'm pretty sure an email received and if put in your inbox, will light up the screen.
 
Hmm - I've had this on my 4S (5.0.1) - it vibrates but nothing appears on the screen. No idea what's causing it. It normally confuses me for a few seconds then I forget about it. But sometimes I'll unlock my phone and go through all screens to see if there are any new badges, I'll check notification centre and there's nothing anywhere. Maybe it's just Siri reminding me he's (UK :-( ) still there. A little nudge.
 
Your phone may be switching networks from 3G to WiFi? Or you have an unread notification or email. My phone has done this as well and this seems to be what it is.
 
My phone does this.

When it does it at night, and I'm just at that point of sleeping, it gets very annoying.
 
I'm pretty sure this is due to push notifications that don't show up. Try disabling the notifications for a day or two and see if you still get the vibrations.
 
My 3GS did this all the time. I thought it was the rocker being switched back in forth in my pocket until I realized it would do it if I had it lying on a table. No email, no sms, nothing. Strangely my 4S doesn't do this, even though I restored my 3GS backup to my 4S.

chakraj said:
I usually cant feel it either, but when its on my desk or table it makes a big racket.

I found this;

In another type of attack, an attacker could hijack a phone by sending a type of SMS message called a control message over the GSM network to a victim's phone that is using a Wi-Fi network and then use special toolkits to sniff the Wifi traffic looking for the victim's e-mail log-in information.
Click to expand...

I doubt this, unless it can enable Wifi. I never enabled Wifi on any of my iPhones and I would still get ghost vibrates.
 
isashach said:
I'm pretty sure this is due to push notifications that don't show up. Try disabling the notifications for a day or two and see if you still get the vibrations.
Click to expand...

This. I noticed my phone doing this after my 5.0 upgrade and eventually discovered it was due to the Mint.com app not supporting notification center. Are any of your apps showing the little number on the icon denoting a waiting notification?
 
Got the same problem yesterday and it was the mail app. It would fetch every hour and vibrate shortly (not the normal long vibration of a notification). In iOS 6, just go to settings > notifications > mail > select the email inbox (gmail, yahoo, et cetera) > scroll down to new mail sound > scroll up to vibration and select none. All fixed!

Maybe click on all things that notify you and edit the vibration to none as I've stated above?
 
Sometimes this happens to me, but only when I was recently in the spam folder of my email. If I leave the mail app without going to the main inbox and staying in the spam folder, I get vibrations when a new spam message comes in but no other types of notifications. Could be you are in something that doesn't get pushed.
 
My old 3GS has started doing this very often now. On that phone, it seems to be a problem with the switch that is used to set the phone to vibrate. The switch is not very solid anymore. The phone will sometimes vibrate several times, just sitting on a table. Fiddling with the switch will make it stop, until it decides to do it again a day or two later.

My 4S will vibrate when it gets e-mail pushed down to it and the phone is in vibrate mode. The screen won't come on, but if I check, I can see the badge in the e-mail icon has a different number on it.
 
I've been getting this on my 4S on ios6 and 7 but I know what it is for me: my school's email account. I get a vibration and email sound but no actual notification on the lock screen or banner when the phone is unlock (despite notifications being set up to show both of these and works with other email accounts).

Oddly, I also get double the notifications for my gmail account for each single email.

I'm sure the vibrations are legitimate, you just need to find what notification it actually is that's not showing up properly.
 
Probably an email.

This happens when my Mac is on and OS X Mail filters the email as junk or moves it to an "on my Mac" folder.
 
I know this post is years and years old, but I just figured out why my phone does this.

I have the Mail app set with 3 email addresses... In the Notifications Settings for Mail, I found that one of the mailboxes had "Show in Notification Center" and "Show on Lock Screen" turned off. I don't know why I never noticed that sometimes I'd have one or two new emails that I didn't expect to be there.

This has completely solved my phantom vibration problem. Now I don't feel crazy... my phone WAS vibrating occasionally. I didn't imagine it. My phone just never gave me any visual lock screen or notification center pop-up.
 
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