Alarm clock went unreliable with FPOOS 9 and still is on 10

Help Fairphone 2
1

Hi, for about half a year I witness that occasionally the alarm clock just doesn’t work. I have a daily wakeup alarm that I NEVER change or disable.

On some days, it just doesn’t work!

Most of the time it works as intended. But slightly less than once a week it does not.

I could not find any reason for this behaviour. I hoped it would go away with the update to 10 (lasted version), but it didn’t. Alarm clock is just unreliable, and that is a BIG no-go!

Sometimes, when I wake up early, I see that when I pick up the FP2, it does not (which it should) display that an alarm is imminent. When I see that, a reboot helps. So I guess it’s an instability of the alarm clock process, that gets restarted by the reboot…

2

Interesting. Running /e/ I’ve seen a problem with the stock Clock app too, while the alarm sounded as expected, it failed to display a switch to turn it off!!

My solution was to install Simple Clock by Tibor Kaputa (available on F-Droid).

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3

Did you check battery safer options (that they’re turned off) for the alarm app?

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4

When I have the phone on the bedpost, it is hooked to the charger…

5

There is no battery saving option on the alarm clock. Only the “battery optimization” - and that is not available for alarm clock.

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6

Today the alarm once again did not work…

7

Any signs the phone rebooted, like SIM Pin required?

Cant say specifically why, however when I really had to wake up at a specific time, I always used something in addition to the FP2, I’m sure there were occasions when the FP2 alarm did not work.

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8

I don’t have SIM PIN activated. Also no other signs of a reboot. I never had problems with the alarm until I went to FPOOS on Android level 9…

It seems that the process silently dies and isn’t restarted. When there is an alarm coming up, you usually have the silent message “alarm pending”. When the alarm won’t sound, there is also no message about a pending alarm. Opening the clock app and unsetting and setting the desired alarm will immediately lead to the pending alarm message, but that is NOT acceptable, that the alarm has to be set daily!

A regular alarm is set ONCE and from then on the phone MUST faithfully sound the alarm!

9

No need to scream at other user we try to help and cant change anything really, so best is, you check the bug tracker if there is an open issue, else open one.

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10

Sorry, did not mean to shout, just wanted to emphasize. Thanks for the issue tracker.

11

Theoretically, in an ideal world with sufficient software quality, yes.

https://www.google.com/search?q=android+alarm+problem

https://www.google.com/search?q=iphone+alarm+problem

But then the hardware might stop working suddenly, this possibility still remains.

Strongly seconded.
And ideally place the additional alarm device out of your reach so you have to get up first to turn it off :wink: .

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12

Sorry, don’t want to offend anyone, but you don’t use an alarm clock if it is so unreliable that it is being proposed to use backup alarm.

The backup could break as well. So backups for the backups? Where is the limit? How many backup devices are needed before you reliably get a wakeup call?

What would you do with an alarm clock purchased in a store that does not wake you up on 1 - 3 mornings PER WEEK? How would you react if the dealer then tells you “if you want reliability, just buy two of them?”

This “reasoning” is out of this world…

13

In fact, I do.
I just accept that a smartphone is not 100% reliable in what it does. It can’t be according to my subjective perception of nowadays software quality (or lack thereof), and then there’s still objective stuff like bitflips. I can’t find a reference even for current smartphones having ECC memory.

That is correct.
But the probability wouldn’t be too high I guess. But not zero.

You set the limit with a personal assessment of how secure you want to feel with your alarm solution.
Your current trouble should give you a hint in that regard.

I would return it. And I wouldn’t compare a probably hardwired simple alarm clock with a computer device running overly complex layers of software. It’s quite a stretch.

I would say that’s a sound advice, and I wouldn’t buy two identical ones (same brand + same model = could have the same flaws) :wink: .

I wonder which reasoning here is more rooted in visible reality.
Anyway, back to being constructive …

With @OldRoutard’s suggestion it should be possible to find out whether it’s just the stock clock App acting up for you.

If all else fails … 🇬🇧 🇩🇪 ✏ Installing the Fairphone 2 from scratch in case of failure / Komplette Neuinstallation des Fairphone 2 im Fehlerfall

14

“I just accept that a smartphone is not 100% reliable in what it does. It can’t be according to my subjective perception of nowadays software quality (or lack thereof),”

So you admit that FPOOS, which Open Source, lacks the software quality it needs?

How about improving it? Reliable software can be written.

Your words are nothing short of a capitulation.

Why should anyone want to buy a phone (or install this OS on it) if even the people close to it’s development say that it cannot be trusted?

If you don’t even set yourself higher goals, how could you ever achieve them?

I work in the IT department of a large international airport. Believe me, reliable software is possible and it does exist. Both commercial an Open Source. Without it, operating air travel would be dangerous for passengers and people on the ground. Todays jet airliners are operated solely by computers and software, they control everything on board, and so is ATC, air traffic control.

Thank god reliable software does exist.

And sorry,

“I would return it. And I wouldn’t compare a probably hardwired simple alarm clock with a computer device running overly complex layers of software. It’s quite a stretch.”

is just far away from reality. If the alarm clock isn’t mechanical, anything showing digital numbers is also just a piece of software. But a reliable piece of software.

" If all else fails … :uk: :de: :pencil2: Installing the Fairphone 2 from scratch"

As the unreliability is new to alarm clock (wasn’t there before A9 level), simply undo the damage done to it’s source code. Regress and go back to earlier, reliable code revisions, and learn where the mistake was done.

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15

In my point of view that is true for the largest part of any halfway complex software running today.
It could be different, as luckily you attest to yourself.

Absolutely.
Perhaps you can help me out a bit.

Is better software quality in aviation achieved by applying best development practices from the ground up, or just by rigorously cleaning up after industry “standard” development practices because strict regulation in aviation defines that in the end somebody will have to take responsibility for mistakes instead of treating software malfunction like an act of God?
I lack the insight to perhaps draw some hope out of it.

Because customers readily do this because of other priorities, there’s not much choice anyway, and if there would be a realistic choice, would customers prioritise the better approach? The better concept doesn’t automatically win, IT is full of examples of this. Or to phrase it better, the market decides the better concept in hindsight and not entirely based on conceptual priorities.
And I’m not close to development, just to say.

For this it would first need to be established that there is in fact something wrong with the clock App and the issue is not caused by other influences.
Given that, this should of course be fixed, and then on to the next bug.

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16

This has nothing to do with FPOOS and is a general problem regardless of the system installed and starts with Apple and Google. You cant compare with important software used in other circumstances, we are talking about a Smartphone, and the FP2 is an old smartphone and keeping it alive is cost intensive and difficult due to the old Hardware.

And a digital alaram clock has nothing else to do than showing the time and waking you up, a Smartphone has a lot more responsibilities, so a comparison of apples with oranges.

Overall I guess we will not agree here, you dont want to accept and I accept such obstacles as not important for me. Fight your fight and accept I will not attend this fight.

I understand you are unhappy and I cant change this ,so please get in touch with Fairphone.
We are not Fairphone, so telling us what you expect will not help you.

17

“Because customers readily do this because of other priorities, there’s not much choice anyway,”

What other priorities would make anyone accept an untrustworthy device? And “not much choice” in smartphones, this must be a joke of yours.

“For this it would first need to be established that there is in fact something wrong with the clock App and the issue is not caused by other influences.”

I already established that. The alarm clock app was reliable up until the upgrade to Android level 9.

Theoretically, the root cause (to speak in ITIL terms) could be something else. And my assumption (being an ISTQB certified software tester) is that it is not only the alarm clock app, but something in the OS around that changed - and the app was not properly adapted to. Because FPOOS since the upgrade to Android level 9 does have problems with crashing apps all around. Commercial, open source, there seems to be no common denominator. Which does lay proof to a fundamental flaw. And no, it’s not about my device. There are numerous bug reports from users that have problems with apps crashing since A9. And most of those users hoped it could go away with A10. Because most bug reports on A9 got closed with remarks like “why don’t you upgrade to A10?”. But it did not go away.

18

“This has nothing to do with FPOOS and is a general problem regardless of the system installed and starts with Apple and Google.”

Why is it then that there are no reports of unreliable SW with Google’s Android? If the alarm clock in Googles Android would have been as unreliable, surely we would have read tons of complaints, because of a user base in the hundreds of millions… So it does have something to do with FPOOS and only with FPOOS.

“You cant compare with important software used in other circumstances, we are talking about a Smartphone, and the FP2 is an old smartphone and keeping it alive is cost intensive and difficult due to the old Hardware.”

Of course you are right the HW is old. But the HW is the one thing totally innocent in this regard.

“And a digital alaram clock has nothing else to do than showing the time and waking you up, a Smartphone has a lot more responsibilities, so a comparison of apples with oranges.”

Sorry, no. Android is built on a fork of the Linux kernel, and the Linux kernel is known to be very effective in process isolation and memory protection. Which is why today the critical IT systems in airline industry are built on Linux and not on Windows…

“I understand you are unhappy and I cant change this ,so please get in touch with Fairphone.
We are not Fairphone, so telling us what you expect will not help you.”

I did open a ticket on the issue tracker, thanks for providing the link.

19

Dont agree

No reports🤔

Btw dont see any report here except yours, so…

20

I’ll make a clarification, so this doesn’t take on a wrong twist: I do not blame anyone, especially not in here.

But from my perspective, there is nothing that could be more important than stability and reliability. Without them, there can be no performance, there can be no feature that could be counted as an asset. Without stability and reliability, everything (!) you may strive for in software will come tumbling down.

A system with only few features, but with stability, is a much (!) better base for development and growth than a feature packed, but instable system. Which is why such a system must always be preferred.

So from my (ISTQB) perspective I would like to give the advice to put stability at the top of all demands directed at any (!) SW. Or HW.