iPhone 4 - Alarm clock goes off, but no vibe or sound?!

It's hard to believe that they don't know how to fix the alarm sound through five models and six operating systems...

To me, a lack of response over several years, phones, and OSes on such a simple but crucial error is negligence on Apple's part... and it isn't just the iPhone alarm - there are many important issues they fail to address in this way (ask any iOS developer). Their attitude seems to be "software isn't perfect, so don't depend on ours" - I totally agree with that. I'm fine with products getting shipped with buggy software, but sellig a broken product as a working product and failing to address the issues in such a blatant manner, to me, is criminal. If this was Dell or Microsoft, somebody would have taken them to court long ago over their negligence on support. People won't be giving Apple a break because of perceived coolness forever. Watch out, Apple. If you don't change, you'll get your comeuppance for this eventually.

I am having this problem ever since getting my iPhone 4 in August 2011. Using the native Alarm app, no 3rd party apps. My phone is on Silent (hardware switch on the side) for night mode.

Set the alarm, and plug the cord to charge. Alarm sounds. No problem.

Set the alarm, don't plug the phone. Alarm sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. I have had over two dozen failures. The display says "ALARM" with the option to snooze, but no sound comes through. Zilch.

At other times, the alarm will sound, I hit the snooze button. After that, the display will show Alarm, but no sound will come through.

This is a VERY SERIOUS bug, and needs to be addressed. I'd hate to move to a different platform for this, but such blatant bugs just cause me to hate the device enough to do it.

The worst part, more serious, is that I had the problem in BOTH the Apple native Alarm AND 3rd party apps... so I can't count on the phone to wake up. Not at all.

Me and a friend just had the same problem…at the same time! We had both set our alarms for 11:00pm on Monday, August 12, 2013.

I have an iPhone 4 running iOS 5.1.1. He has an iPhone 5 running 6.1.4. Other alarms we set worked normally, this one did the thing where it displayed the alarm message and snooze option but wasn't making any sound.

Other possibly relevant details:

1. The phone was in Airplane mode at the time with Wi-Fi on.

2. The silent switch was set to on (vibrate).

3. We (and our phones) were in the Managua, Nicaragua time zone.

4. Managua does not use daylight savings time.

5. The alarm was set up around 9:45pm

6. No notifications came in between the alarm being set and it going off (without sound)

This is apparently a longstanding bug.

My iPhone 4 did this today. I woke up about 30 minutes after my first alarm should have gone off and stumbled across the room to the phone to see the "Snooze" option on the screen but no sound - no vibrate. When I hit "Snooze" it brought up the second "Snooze" screen (I have 2 alarms set 15 minutes apart). Oddly, whileI was in the shower my wife was awoken by the first snoozed alarm.

I use my phone to get up for work every morning. It always has the silent switch on but I've never had this problem. The only abnormal thing was that I had YouTube app open - was listening to a song when I went to bed - and I'm wondering if this app took full priority over sound.

I'll do some test runs today with the app open and see.

Same here. I just missed a deadline because my alarm didn't make a noise. I woke up and it was "going off" with no sound. Then just to test it I snoozed it and a few minutes later it went off again silently. All my alarms are set to use the "alarm" sound. It doesn't always do this, but it just takes once to really screw you over. Inconsistency makes the alarm function useless.

By the way I'm using an iPhone 4S and iOS 6.

I think this is unacceptable. This should be something the developer could easily fix, and yet we don't have a solution even after all the iOS versions that came out after the bug was first reported.

I have had this problem for almost a year now.

But mine occurs on the iPad 2!

I have been using a third party app for a long time without any problems.

I only use it when travelling so it's hard to know when the issue truely began.

Then one morning, I awoke andthe screen showed alarm sounding but no sound!.

I always leave the iPad plugged in with the app running to see the clock throughout the night.

I ran test alarms and they all had no sound.

I don't keep apps up to date regularly, so I updated all the apps when I got home and retested.

The alarms were now working.

Then I went on another trip and the alarm failed.

So now I have to use wakeup calls because my iPad is not dependable.

It's possible the alarms started working again because the plane ride home required me to power off the iPad.

I had falsely assumed the issue was with the 3rd party app since that was the only alarm I used and I use it so infrequently.

However, my wife's iPhone5 using the Apple Clock app failed to sound this morning.

The iPhone was vibrating for the Alarm, but the sound was silent.

She uses this alarm everyday.

I don't even see a setting to enable Clock to vibrate.

She tested it and all Alarms were silent.

After power cycling the iPhone, the Alarms were working again.

There is something that gets confused in the IOS that sometimes causes the Alarm sounds to be silent.

I sure hope Apple finds a fix so I can sleep betterr. 🙂

bdog

I've owned an iPhone since 2007 and always relied 100% on the native alarm app of my iPhone. I had an alarm failure in Jan 2011 due to the repeat vs single use alarm bug. And I've just had another two alarm fails (last Friday, and today-Monday). The alarm goes off with no sound and the just snooze notification. Last Friday I over slept by 45 min and luckily today I woke up due to thunder storm and checked the time, and realized I had over slept by 15 min. Now I will need to purchase an actual alarm clock because I can't afford to rely on a device that doesn't work. My contract is over with AT&T; I was going to buy the iPhone 5s this Friday when it comes out, but now I think I will get the new Samsung Galaxy. I had been considering it, but the alarm issue is something I cannot tolerate and will likely push me over the edge and switch to the dark side.

The alarm clock issue is a main motivator for me to consider other options ("other" a word I use loosely, since there's only Android as a real alternative). As of the latest iOS 6, the bug has not been fixed. It is rather hard to understand why so many calendaring and time-keeping bugs exist in mobile OS's. The PC has it right, why not mobile devices?

Apologies for taking this thread off-topic... I also wish the screen on iPhones were wider. Feels too narrow for many online newspaper columns (which do not all support READER mode), which causes the font to be too small.

Have you all tried something as simple as turning your iphone completely off for a minute? That solved it for me. And it usually solves most minor software issues.

Yes, I did that, and no it did not help. Besides, it's an OS bug, the MUST fix it.

same for me. using two different ipod gen 3 and 4 over the years, also on my i pad. so I went throught numerous update of ios. no schedule in my calendar interfering, it's empty.

first time i really look to this issue on a forum, sadly all the post are old and no answer yet?

now I have to use my ipad and ipod just to be sure one is going to work.

overslept twice last week, plus one nap this saturday night. alarm is showing but no soud...

the silence of the moderators of this forum or any mac representative is showing their great lack of customers services.

it's unacceptable!