IssueTracker

Just updated my ADP1 with the official 1.1 image
as described here: http://www.htc.com/www/support/android/adp.html

Problem is still there. Alarms working fine if phone is on,
alarms not working is phone is off.

This is a standard feature, it can't be that I have to keep the phone on!

Still the same with 1.5.
I have the feeling at the moment it's not possible to schedule events that turn the
phone on... is that right?

use airplane mode instead of turning phone off

Sure, that works fine, however

1) this is a feature that my Nokia 3310 (a phone from 10 years ago) supported.
I can't believe the G1 can't do that!

2) It was listed on the old HTC T-Mobile G1 specs [1]. The page was then edited and
the "alarms to power up phone" part disappeared.

3) Threads on the T-Mobile forum regarding this issue are regularly deleted for some
reason...

I understand implementing this feature on android may be more difficult than on other
embedded phones like my old nokia (and all the phones i owned after).
But it's for sure not 'impossible'

So, until i hear something official from google/htc/t-mobile I'm considering this a bug.


[1] http://www.htc.com/www/product/g1/specification.html

My bad, the thread i was talking about on the t-mobile forum was not deleted,
just moved [1] under google_apps subforum.

Here's a snip from the original HTC spec that was later edited, you can find it here [2]

[...]
Alarm
Yes; alarm will still function if the phone is powered off.
Calculator
Yes
Calendar
Yes; with sync to Google Calendar
[...]

[1]http://forums.t-mobile.com/tmbl/board/message?board.id=AndroidGApps&thread.id=731
[2]
http://forums.t-mobile.com/tmbl/board/message?board.id=AndroidGApps&message.id=853#M853

THe simple fact is that the G1 is a smart phone.. and Android is an open source
platform that runs independent (for the most part) of the hardware that it is. The
phones that fire off alarms even when off have it written into their BIOS.. so the
long short of it is that Android does not do this, the BIOS is the G1 domain and
someone would have to alter HTC's settings along with Android to interact with them...

Same problem for me. Set an alarm, and it sounds if the phone is on (or in standby)
but not if the phone is off. Most other brands of phone allow you to turn the mobile
off without stopping the alarm from sounding. Seems like a bug, especially since the
mobile (HTC Magic) doesn't give you a warning if you turn off the phone when an
alarm is set (which would be sensible behaviour if this was really "by design").

[Comment deleted]

Any news about this issue?
A page to follow the progress would be great.

If we have to wait long can you please explain us why? It would help people to wait
if they could understand why they have to.

Thanks

As far as I can understand Android does not currently support waking up from a power off condition based on an
alarm set in the Alarm Clock application, or indeed any application. Perhaps it will support this functionality
eventually, but at this time it simply doesn't.

As long as the hardware is in place, it wouldn't be very hard to add this functionality to Android.

Many Smartphone Dont Support this Because when Phone is off the OS is Completely Shut
down so it can not send any Timer Events. If your Phone had BIOS kind of this These
have done but i think in never Future only for Alarm this Major Hardware changes will
not be Possible

Which is why consumers should stay away from such devices in case they consider the
lack of this particular feature a deal breaker.

As I said with the right hardware Android can be made to wake the device up from a
power off condition. In fact I have such a device on my desk at the moment and it
does wake up when the alarm is set to go off. But some changes first need to be made
to Android because it also wakes up when synchronization is scheduled to occur. This
is because the Calendar and other apps that rely on regular synchronization use the
same type of alarm as the Alarm Clock app does.

The type of alarm you are talking about is based on Cron?

I understand that Android doesn't support off-alarm but I think that many users are
disappointed about that...
most of us payed more 400/500 dollars/euros for our smartphone which is laking a lot
of features, alarm when of is one of them but there are others (just to make an
example the bluetooth transfer, even my old nokia 6610 can handle that)

I'm not saying that android or the phone sucks, I just saying that user should be
able to see how much time they had to wait for those features and on which phone they
will get the feature.

question like this:
"Has my HTC Magic hardware support for waking up when of?"

should be answered in a page that list models and what they can do.
Then a page for each missing feature that say how much time user will have to wait
for the feature.

I'm a little disappointed and I could feel better if I had a page like that.

Is there anything like this around? Will it be compiled and made public?

Thanks,
Daniele

[Comment deleted]

[Comment deleted]

This problem has been assigned, so we just need to wait for an official verdict. I am a software engineer
and see no reason why this isn't possible. Most hardware including PCs only have a single hardware
clock, then it is up to the OS to schedule the next wakeup into that single clock every time it wakes.

I have noticed that applications like TaskKiller have led to shutting down the clock
task and thus turning off the alarm.  Be sure that the clock task is
either "ignored" by these kill task applications and check to see if the clock task
is running before going to bed.

Perhaps Phanna can give us an update on this?

Currently, we do not have hardware that supports powering on the device due to an
alarm. When we have supported hardware, we will consider adding the feature.

this means that no one that posted here will ever get this feature on their current
phone.

Ok, I'm a bit disappointed but at least now I know I shouldn't wait for it.

Thanks Phanna

Yes it's good to know something, finally!
By the way, are you saying that ALL phones that came out lack this feature (G1, Hero,
Magic, ...)?

@mats.m.bengtsson: which hardware are you using? just curious

Daniele: it's not cron, the OS isn't running.

marco.tijuana: I don't know enough about the hardware configuration for the Android
phones currently available to tell you if they could possibly support waking up from
power off at a set time. It is entirely possible they do, but you'll need to ask the
handset manufacturer about it.

The device I have on my desk is a lab unit. There are units based on the same or
similar hardware solution currently in the marketplace, but not with Android on
them, not at at present at least. At some time in the future perhaps, but from which
handset manufacturers and under which names, I have no idea. Even if I did know I
couldn't tell you.

phanna, why is this issue marked as a defect and not an enhancement request?

I think it is just mis-marked. I am also moving this away from me since it is a system
issue. JBQ, framework might not be the proper component since this involves hardware
support and/or kernel/driver support.

Yes, this is definitely an enhancement request, and as far as this bug database is concerned it's a device issue
(meaning, it can't be worked on by someone who just has access to the open-source tree and requires some
cooperation from a device manufacturer).

I emailed Qualcomm today and got the following reply: "I can’t answer your question
in detail, but I note that the RIM Blackberry Storm, which is based on the same
chipset (MSM7200A), can be programmed to wake up from power-off."

So, this is either an Android OS or a HTC/Samsung firmware problem, but either way
it should be fixable in software.

I agree that this will probably require input from HTC and Samsung.

Mmmm who do we have to trust? android devs or qualcom email support?

Any updates during the last few weeks? I agree that a system that remembers the time
should be able to perform this function.

I will try to find out if any of our hardware supports this feature. If it does, I
will investigate implementing this as an opt-in service.

Any news on this? Would love to be able to switch off at night.

Possible workaround is simply turn phone to airplane mode overnight.

> Possible workaround is simply turn phone to airplane mode overnight.

That's actually what I do.  And given how long the phone takes to boot up it might be
a better overall solution anyway, but I'd still prefer to shut the phone off.
Battery life on the G1 isn't exactly great..

I want my phone do nothing what so ever while it is off. If you want this do
something similar to RIM's standby mode with their Blackberry OS. Its another mode
that is optimized to do the very least of processes. Maybe have Android kill all apps
but phone, alarm clock and possibly Mms. The point of turning it off is to ignore it
and stop all functions of it and I wish to keep it that way. Our phones run many
processes on a regular basis and those all take power when I power my phone off It to
save battery when I am doing something that will require battery latter on. I run
CyanogenMod and he has many 2.0 things in it and I will say it does functions quicker
and so less time is spent using the CPU and so I do see better battery life and as
Android matures becomes even better at power conservation this could be implemented
with no issue with battery life decreased as a result.

But I cannot understand your issue here. We want the phone to have added
functionality of being able to be awaken for alarm from power off. Naturaly if this
future is implemented it will be like in all phones having such capability an option
on the alarm page. So if you don't want this function you just won't check the option
power on the phone if off.

Hummm... any news about this feature? Also the Nexus One miss it :( .

It should be an option for each alarm setting, whether it should fire even when phone
is off.  That would be very useful.

It's not an Android problem only. The same happen on my HTC Snap S523 with WM 6.1. No
alarm if phone's off. Very annoying!!!

> It's not an Android problem only. The same happen on my HTC Snap S523 with WM 6.1. No
alarm if phone's off. Very annoying!!!

Not true, blackberry phones will power on for the alarm event even when off.

> It's not an Android problem only. The same happen on my HTC Snap S523 with WM 6.1. No
alarm if phone's off. Very annoying!!!


This is the first phone I've had (admittedly, never tried it with my Motorola Memphis
in 1997) were the alarm does not activate even when the phone is switched off but the
problem here is worse even than that.
Simply: the alarm doesn't always work even when the phone is switched on/in standby
mode. Last week my HTC Hero worked fine and the alarm went off every morning. This
week - nothing!
It's ridiculous that such a basic function is so erratic and I am sure it has
something to do with the clock not updating (on the home page) whilst the phone is in
standby as, on some occasions, after I've activated the phone an alarm will go off
even if it's 30+ minutes late!

I also thought that there was a problem with the alarms often not working when I
turned my Milestone off and I had to use an additional alarms as a backup.

However, I realized that the alarm program was killed whenever I ran TaskKiller.
Since I marked the Alarm program as "ignored" (3 weeks ago) the alarm has woken me up
every morning.

Looking back in this forum, I notice that seancotten pointed this out over 4 months ago.

I've "ignored" my alarm program in TaskKiller since I got the phone last November and
it is still hit and miss. I've even uninstalled TaskKiller to test it and it's still
potluck whether the alarm works or not...

Most of you seem to miss the point here - this is not an Android problem "per se".

Does your average Linux or Windows box have this sort of capability? No. Why? Because
we're talkin OS level here - and an OS is turned of as soon as you tell your machine
to shutdown. No portion of the OS stays resident while the machine is physically
powered off. This is the case with Android as well.

What makes your system wake-up at specified time is the battery powered chip which
holds the device firmware (BIOS or else). As such, this is a platform dependent issue
i.e. this would need to be implemented by each VENDOR specifically for a given
hardware platform, rather than by Android itself.

What Android would need to provide to the firmware is some read-only memory area
where the hardware clock / firmware could check-in periodically to see if there is an
alarm or some time dependent action due.

So, in all fairness, this is 90% a vendor issue, 10% an Android issue.
Maybe start complaining to Motorola, HTC, Samsung and others to implement a battery
powered hardware clock that also features some sort of watchdog for OS-level
scheduled events.

This would not only solve the problem at hand, but also present the opportunity to
implement some cool new features like timed power-on/off etc.

Just my 2c :)

> Just my 2c :)

Again, it's not just limited to when the phone is switched off... the alarm just
doesn't always work even when the phone is on...

@ptashek I agree with what you said, except the first point
>Does your average Linux or Windows box have this sort of capability? No.
Actually they do (100% sure for Mac only) you can schedule timed power-up,
network-wakeup etc..

@the rest of you
1. Before posting, read the whole thread, we already went through an explanation
multiple times
2. If the problem is the alarm not working when the phone is ON, then this is the
wrong bug, go to http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1109 (the issue
was probably solved. It's likely that you're running an old OS version.

>1. Before posting, read the whole thread, we already went through an explanation
multiple times

Doesn't work in all cases...

>2. If the problem is the alarm not working when the phone is ON, then this is the
wrong bug, go to http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1109 (the issue
was probably solved. It's likely that you're running an old OS version.

No, it's not been solved and is still occuring...

@marco.tijuana: The hint was in "Linux or Windows". Neither of these OSes has the
capability to do a timed or network wake-up on its own. What drives this
functionality under either OS is the BIOS/EFI and the RTC - and that is always a
vendor dependent solution.

@phil.lunt
Read carefully posts 1 to 16. You'll find all the necessary info.

@ptashek
Just google for "schedule wake-up {linux, windows}", you'll find that it's possible
(assuming your BIOS allows it, as you say).
I wrote that I'm not 100% sure just because I didn't test those solutions myself

As stated in comment 30, The Qualcomm chipset used in all current Android
phones "can be programmed to wake up from power-off."

So this can be solved woth an Android update. When the phone is shutting down the
Hardware RTC should have the next Alarm time written to it and the flag set for the
RTC to wake the device when this Alarm expires. The RTC can then boot Android
(either fully or at a low level), then the OS can sound the Alarm.

I agree that this will require updates to the baseband firmware from the device
manufacturers like of HTC and Samsung, but:

A) Qualcomm say the HW supports it - Good News!

B) The Changes need to be made in the OS code before the manufacturers will update
their lower level code.

"A) Qualcomm say the HW supports it - Good News!

B) The Changes need to be made in the OS code before the manufacturers will update
their lower level code."

Shouldn't it be the other way around? As in, the lower level code should go first, and
then the OS developers should implement based on that..

[Comment deleted]

[Comment deleted]

[Comment deleted]

Two things baffle me about this 'issue'.

Why this is an important issue to some? And I am baffled that an Android team member  
actually commented in this thread, when FAR more important and older issues (listed
in this forum) seem completely ignored (by the Android team).

>7. Turn the phone off and wait few + some more minutes
>(the alarm does not fire, the phone stays dead)

This is by design, hardware design! I don't get it? This is not an Android OS
problem. If there is universal hardware support, then their could be OS support.

Question: Why would you power off your phone, if you expect to hear an alarm?

When I power off my phone it is most likely because I want to conserve whatever
battery power I have left. When I power it off, I expect their to be 0 drain. You are
suggesting a feature where the phone is never really powered off.

I am curious about why anyone would care about such a feature?

To be fair, I do know for fact, that Palm and iPhones have such a feature. But
remember an important fact... both manufacturers have control over the hardware and
the software.

I guess I can answer that. When you buy a phone like a Sony Ericsson c510a that costs
no more than $229, and it has this functionality, you'd expect that a smartphone that
costs $300 more to have the same feature, if not improved. Whether it's helpful or
not
is a personal decision, but in my case, for the very sake of saving battery, I'd
rather
turn off my phone over the night knowing that my wakeup alarm will work even if it's
off.

And no, iPhones don't have such a feature. Not sure about Palms

Doh! You are correct!

I am fairly new to the iPhone. The black button on top is NOT a power switch! Soft
switch slider to power OFF! Tested and failed!

So far, I have confirmed that this alarm to power on feature is built into the Palm
and Blackberry. I have also talked to a few of those owners (in my office) and they
actually love that feature.

Still, to have this on the Android would require cooperation from the hardware
manufacturers.

The reasons I want this are:

1) The Alarm Clock will go off even if the battery had died in the night.
2) The phone can be switched off at night to save battery.

If this is impemented correctly using the built-in HW then the power consumption
increase when the phone is off AND an alarm is set will be tiny - hugely less than
leaving the phone on. If the phone is on, with or without an alarm is set, or if the
phone is off without an alarm set there will be no difference at all.

So this change can only bring a benificial feature that people have come to expect.

Okay, I can see merit with this request.

Sorry to sound so negative but if the Android team cannot even control OS
fragmentation (which is getting worse with each new OS update), what makes you think
they will have any say in how hardware is designed?

It seems that this kind of feature will likely only happen with individual hardware
manufacturers. ... uh.. good luck with that! :-(

Bottom line, the Android team need to get their act together and assert more control
over both the OS and the hardware specifications.

Not sure this is an issue, when the phone is off it's off, if you want it to wake you
up, airplane mode.  Don't turn it off.  If I have an alarm clock, and unplug it from
the wall and expect it to wake me up in 6 hours, am I asking too much? I think so.

It is an issue because a regular $100 phone can do it, and if the hardware supports
it in theory, then it most definitely is an issue, or a missing feature, for that matter.

I agree that having the phone wake-up for giving an alarm is a needed feature.  I
used it extensively with my old Blackberry and I definitely miss it with my new
Samsung Moment.

If this is in fact a hardware/firmware issue that the OS can't resolve on its own,
could we instead have a "sleep" mode where the OS goes down to bare-bones
functionality (no screen, apps, etc).  That way, at night we could put it in sleep
mode and drain very little battery and still get auto-on and alarms.

@bob.zakrzewski that would be indeed possible...
Would be cool if the init runlevels would be used for this.
On a rooted phone its no problem to do it and define your own runlevel and what
should all be running in it.
With a good configured "sleep mode" runlevel a user could just send a command like
"init x" and turn the system into a sleep mode that just runs a timer and a listener
for the power button, nothing else.
On timer activity or long press on the power button the device could start into the
normal runlevel again and we would have a sleep mode.
I will do some examples when I get some time but as long google or another
manufacturer with theire stock roms wont take it, it would just be an option for
rooted phones.

This is silly, Your asking google to make a an appliaction at the interperator level
(which is higher than the OS level) operate at the boot level (which is lower, if not
on par with the BIOS)

Thats comparible to asking the power socket on the wall to wake you up in the
morning, without the alarm plugged into it..

sure this is possible, but it would reqire the parts of the Kernal and BOIS to be
exposed to Androids API, and even if google adds support theres still the case of the
device manufactures adding it to thier kernal rollouts, its a massive ask for
something soo little.

1) I personally feel this is a very important feature of a modern high class phone.
Missing an alarm can be very costly for people from all walks of life. From my usage
and, (from what i can gather), that of many others, it is all too easy to put
yourself in a situation where your (power hungry smartphone) phone runs out of power.
A busy executive picks up their phone from the dock to answer a call and forgets to
put it back. The phone "dies" and they end up late or missing a lucrative sales
meeting. A backpacker goes to sleep thinking their phone is being charged but a power
failure occurs. They wake up too late to catch their train and waste the ticket.

2) IMHO, suggesting that this feature request is is not a "Google + Android"
responsibility is quite unfair. Google should not on the one hand express a desire to
establish a "complete mobile phone esosystem" and with the other skirt a fundamental
issue such as this. They should code for it and "suggest" that the manufactures
utilise it.

3) This is an excellent test of Google's commitment and resolve. Marco raised this
issue in February 2009. I write my post over a year later and it appears little
action has been taken. Might i be so bold as to suggest that any half decent software
house or even solo developer would have by now more clearly stated, yes and when or
no and why not.

4) Surely the effort that Google have to make to code for this feature is relatively
unradical and unremarkable. Personally i wouldn't mind if there wasn't even an option
in "Settings" to turn this feature on & off. However, the option should probably
exist to help stave off the nay sayers.

5) My Nexus One alarm doesn't work if the phone is switched off. The alarm in my
Nokia E63 (and ALL my preceding phones) does work when the phone is switched off and
very politely asks me whether i want to "Switch phone on?". Before purchase, i didn't
even check whether the Nexus One had this feature, assuming it to be there!

Please Google, code for it and encourage the manufacturers to support it.

@zargron
Well spoken! I agree!

I agree with zargron.

Seeing this bug assigned and then unassigned with a comment like "that's not
something I can fix, hardware problem" simply doesn't have any sense.

Even if the hardware support it how can it be useful if you don't provide the software?

And if the hardware doesn't support it you can provide a almost-shutdown-state to
have the battery on with run level as someone here suggested or with other ways. it's
up to you how.


This bug has been assigned (without anyone really working on it) for less then 1
month over more then 1 year.
The TRUTH is that NOBODY CARE about this bug between google developers.

Unassigned = no one work/think of it.

At least show us you are doing something about it!!!

@micheal.r, if you ever do put something together for a rooted phone to provide an
almost-shutdown-state, I'd be interested in taking a look at it.  I haven't rooted my
phone, but have some linux experience and may give it a try.

[Comment deleted]

I have the same problem, I think it is the only thing that I do not like in my
android. that and the battery...

ptashek said it best, your asking for hardware level functionality in the OS.

The code that performs this action cannot reside in the OS (Android) because if the
device is powered off the OS does not exist. If you want this functionality talk to
the handset maker.

In the meantime you can simulate this by putting the phone into airplane mode and
turning off BT, Wifi, Synch and the display.

@dansaddy
what kind of reply is this????
how is supposed the handset maker to make this available if the software those not
provide the functionality to take advantage of it???
And anyway: what do you think an hardware provider will tell to a costumer
complaining for it? YOU should make pressure to them, not asking us to do it!!!

and anyway... if the workaround is airplane mode + bt off + wifi off + synch off +
display off provide a state called "stand by" or something that automatically do all
those stuffs
or give a way to customize the modes (like nokia does since 3310).

Saying "not a software issue" is just upsetting.

Show us you are doing something about it!

"The code that performs this action cannot reside in the OS (Android) because if the
device is powered off the OS does not exist. If you want this functionality talk to
the handset maker."

Utter bollocks. The way it would work is as follows:

Android add a function like setWakeupTime(long epochTime); to libsensors. Although
the interface of this library is defined by Android, the actual implementation is
done by the handset makers; they would write an implementation that does the
low-level hardware magic to wake the phone at the appropriate time (if the phone has
the requisite hardware).

How do you think stuff like the radio works? There's no code for that in Android, it
just defines the interface.

Just my 2 cents: Android should also foresees a "light weight boot mode" to handle just
simple task, maybe requesting if it should do a full boot after the task is
accomplished. AFAIK, a light weight boot should be handled in the OS.

I have to agree completely with daniele.bilug and tdhutt, this has to come with  
Android, first. And saying this is not a software issue sounds most disturbing. That is
just not the way to see it.

tdhutt has given in my opnion as a software developer, the most accurate description
of how this feature has to be implemented. (Even if it was a little too colorful!)

Android *must* provide the software side, which it currently does not. But software
support is not enough, the hardware must then make use of the fetaure...

Well said! I am also a developer and this needs to be implemented in Android before
the likes of HTC will update their firmware. We know from my previous post &
discussions with Qualcom that the Hardware already supports a full wakeup from 'Off'
(implemented on the same chipset by Blackberry), so once Android implements this the
likes of HTC can update the firmware to pass the message from Android down to the
chipset. If people don’t like this feature then they don’t have to use it, I don’t
understand why there is so much negativity.

I wonder if any Android engineer is even viewing these issues anymore? Some of these
issues have been around since 2008. Come on now, at least say something or implement
it. I wish the hardware people were Nokia instead of HTC, maybe we would have already
had the feature.

@Ram130 Yes embarrasing! Are there any coders alive or are they having CS-tournaments
at the office instead of doing their jobs? Look at that one guy (Cyanogen) who just
keep on giving us bugfixed, snappier versions of the same OS. I mean, no official
support for Neon floatingpoint on the Snapdragon nor GPU acceleration for the
interface...
This is not 2005 Google! Hire more people dammit!

Do not forget, guys, that most phones work for years so that if it runs out of
battery, it turns off, but alarm goes on nevertheless.
Do not try to force users to go back in time for no reason with newest handsets
(android) and miss plane or similar just because phone alarm does not work without
phone turned on.
It MUST work even with very very low battery so be carefull with solution requiring
booting whole system. There is no reason to boot system just for single task of
several beeps. Sure, gets more complex with snooze, but still too simple to need
booting whole system.
Think, phone has either low battery and may be it will not even boot because of that,
or user turned it off for some reason (so this is the desirable state) and would be
stupid to boot on just because of alarm and then shut down again.

Mine doesn't work with the phone powered on. It does work when I do a test. What's
secret of this alarm clock?! I got to work 12:30 today!!

Is part of the problem that some phones have an "off" setting that's really "standby"?  

If something is turned "off", I expect it to do nothing other than sit there.  If I'm
expecting it to run scheduled alarms, then it's not "off", it's in "standby".

As far as I can tell, the "off" on my Droid truly is "off" so hence, no alarms.

@tomlouie

No, I've had SE and Nokia phones that definitely have been switched off yet the alarm
still works on them. Definitely off, not in standby modes.

@83

On my HTC Tattoo, the alarm has serious reliability issues as well. Works during a
test, sometimes fails in real use. Not sure if this is HTC or Android issue, but it
renders the feature worse than useless (I missed an international flight because of
it...)

I would actually prefer a readily-available option to choose to "have this alarm fire
when phone is off" (or not).  Sometimes I do indeed want my phone off, and sometimes I
really want (certain) alarms to still trigger.

Note that otherwise, I have found the alarms on the Droid (2.0, 2.01 and now 2.1) to
always work as expected - when the phone is on :).

My Hero (1.5) just went through a 2 week period of  of setting all alarms off 32
minutes after they should've done... past 2 days have been fine. This randomness has
meant that for the first time since 1998 I can't rely on my phone to wake me up!

Could we please stick to the "alarms when phone is OFF" issue?
You guys are talking about another bug (which should be solved in versions later than
1.5 btw)

This is not a forum anyway, although it looks like many people miss this point...

@marco.tijuana i couldn't agree more - this isn't the only ticket that has been
driven off topic by people who clearly miss the entire point of issue trackers...

Anyway - I agree that android should provide the software part of a low power/standby
mode for alarms etc.

But I feel very, very strongly that when I turn my off, I want my phone OFF... not in
standby mode...

Considering the history of phones that mis-label their standby button as an off
button, Android should probably do this by default while offering a setting for
people who like correctly labeled buttons aswell...

ki...: If you really want your phone to be completely off then the clock would lose
time and you'd have to reset it every time you turned it on. Most old phones sensibly
keep the clock powered. They're not on 'standby' because of a minute amount of power
going to the clock/alarm, any more than your computer is in 'standby' because of the
BIOS battery.

ki...@managedit.ie: I'm pretty sure the phones I've had in the past where the alarm
worked while powered off were truly powered off and not in some sort of standby mode.
Even when off the system clock is still going to be running off of its own battery
and so this clock would be responsible for the power on signal.

If my phone is off then it's off for a reason. It should NOT have the ability to
override my decision. There's already an icon in the notification try indicating that
there is an active alarm. If you have an active alarm, don't turn off your phone.

I do not want this feature. In fact, it has caused problems for me with previous
phones.

You're kidding, right? This featire is VERY important, especially on a phone. Nokia had
it for years.

@daniel.cormier if you don't want an alarm
turning your phone on, don't set an alarm..

This is a very important feature considering how
greedy new phones are for battery power.  Even
on idle a considerable amount is used.

@kellos1980 well thats the best argument i've seen in a while - Personally, I feel my
rebuttal is much stronger though:

If you want an alarm to go off, don't turn your phone off.

Seriously though lets put the ridiculous commends aside and consider a real possibility:

The clock app should allow you to *choose* if alarms should turn the phone back on or
not...

Yes an option to wake or not would be the best solution of course.  The ability for a phone to switch on
is something I've been used to since around 1999, I was quite shocked my HTC Desire couldn't do this
too - as are many others apparently.

@daniel.cormier, you do actually raise a good point which previous phones have
actually overlooked.

People may have a daily alarm but have turned their phone off to specifically go off
the network. Consider a doctor, pilot or soldier who has an alarm or calerndar alert
set, but has turned their phone off specifically to remain offline. An alarm turning
the phone on could be a hazard in this case.

I guess we need another option here, to have an alarm wake your phone up and switch
it on, but have it remain in offline/"airplane" mode.

Gareth: That's a ridiculously uncommon requirement. The most common use case by a
huge margin, is people turning their phone of at night and having the alarm wake them
in the morning. It would be nice if there were an option to disable this, but it
should be on by default, because that is what most people expect.

@daniel.cormier
>> "If you have an active alarm, don't turn off your phone."
With the same reasoning, i can say "If you want your phone to be off, dont'set any
alarm".

@garethdavidson That's the way it used to work with older phones (at least nokia)
It doesn't really start the phone (i.e. network), it just boots the minimal subset of
OS required to sound the alarm and present a snooze/dismiss screen.

That would be a great thing, but it's of course not so simple.

BTW all of that has already been said 100 or so times above..
Reading before posting?

@tdhutt, my extreme examples may be an uncommon case, but the privacy issues of a
phone turning itself has the potential to affect everyone. Your daily alarm wakes you
up at your mistresses with plenty of time to get home, but your wife can see exactly
where you are thanks to location broadcasting apps. The ex/loan shark/FBI agents
you're avoiding send you an SMS and sit waiting for the delivery report so they can
see when your phone comes online. Nobody wants to wake up to Android ruining their
marriage, life, good looks or freedom.

When you turn the phone off deliberately it should be careful about turning itself
back on.

1) I suggest that if you do a list of pros & cons for this feature of the alarm
working even if the phone is off, then the pros far out way the cons. @daniel.cormier
- you seem to be vehemently opposed to this feature. What are the "cons" are far as
you are concerned? Don't just say "i don't want it". Please give the benefits of NOT
having this feature.

2) Regards your comment @garethdavidson about the phone switching on when the alarm
goes off... I suggest my Nokia handles this very well. When alarm presents itself and
i select "stop", i get asked "Switch phone on?" This is excellent. When woken up on a
normal morning i say yes and commence my work day. If i'm on a plane i say no.

I agree that this is a feature the phone should have because I can't stand it to not
wake me up if it run out of battery.
My old 3310 used to trigger the alarm even if the battery was almost death and not
enough to power on the device.

Anyway guys...
This kind of phone are built to be always on. You should put the phone in Airplane
Mode instead of powering it off...
It still consume more battery then when the phone is off but it consume A LOT less.
What actually happen is that is like if you are using your phone without the SIM in
it, so no connectivity at all: no phone calls, no sms, no internet, ...

That's not to say: "hey it's ok without the feature", this is to make you able to use
the alarm without wasting too much battery.

Another thing: be careful with application like "kill task" because you can kill your
alarm trigger without noticing until you wake up late :)

Hello,

Device: HTC Legend
OS: Android 2.1

I had the same problem. I read all the notes and issues in other forums. I found out
that the problem is that I kill the process. If you are using "Advanced Task Kill"
you may be killing the process, please notice that the active alarm icon is present
but the process is off!

So like Daniele said you are probably killing your alarm process. :)

haha yeah i had the same problem! took me two day's to figure out it was me killing
the process each night after i'd set the alarm!! Advance Task Kill is now set to
ignore my alarm process ;)

The price or age of a phone means nothing when it comes to many of its behaviors.
Many of these devices are becoming extremely complex, and their behaviors are
controlled on at least 5 levels: 1)hardware mfr, 2)firmware, 3)OS, 4)app, 5)user
settings.  We all need to become extremely sophisticated shoppers, because we find
ourselves blindsided by "little" things like this.  Many of us do have 30 days to
return a device however, and need to do so!

For things to be "fixed", or to receive help though, PLEASE approach these items as
though you are actually seeking technical support; tell us your phone mfr and model,
OS version and release, and carrier (as a minimum).

If a "work around" is known, USE IT!

You may consider your power "off" even though an alarm will sound, another person may
not consider their "power off" unless nothing at all will happen.  It's not a
question of who's technically correct (that's clearly evident), but of what each
wants.  To get the best technical support, you must use the most technically accurate
descriptions and terms you can.


If a "work around" is known, USE IT!!!!  If you have a complaint/suggestion, and
"Google" totally agrees with you, the "fix" would be put into another release of
Android, along with many, many other "fixes", and might very well not even be
compatible or available for your phone which would be "old" ("legacy" is the word
used by marketing types) by the time the OS update is released.  Hey, you can't run
Vista or Ubuntu on your old 286, or OSX on your AppleII either!!!  OK, that's an
exaggeration, and meant to be, but to make a point.

Sorry folks, but this is not a feature we want to do.  There are too many unknowns with respect to what state the
device is in exactly when it boots into the alarm-only state with respect to 3rd party apps, the hardware, kernel,
bootloader settings required to implement this feature.

I think they already implement this feature and you just need to use this
implementation .. or how other Mobile OS using this feature of hardware while OS is
not loaded and mobile switched off ?

We know you don't want to do it because you didn't implement it yet. But we want this feature, that's because
people keeps voting this idea.

Oh come on... Symbian can do it, you can't decline this issue...
Just put the device to sleep with a timer that wakes it up, it's not hard and at
least it's a beginning...

too bad :-(

This is *basic*

Poor show, Google.  

More than 400 people have stared this issue until today. I hope this number is
overwhelmed by the number of comments asking to revoke this 'decline'.

If they don't want to implement it,why is it already working? I have 2 g1's, 1 running
cyanogenmod 5.07 and the other one running the rogers emergency 911 update,and the
cyanogenmod one won't on any rom (even stock) but the rogers one has since I took it
out of the box,and on every rom I've tried,including cyanogenmod,so it has something to
do with hardware not software.

Dear Mr Google,

Thank you for letting us know your disinterest in this idea and at last giving us an
answer. In the interests of increased openness so that the industry can innovate more
rapidly and respond better to consumers' demands, (you may have heard or read that
somewhere before), what obstacles stand in the way of a phone manufacturer wanting to
distinguish themselves by offering us the feature of an alarm working when the phone
is off?

In other words, does the latest version of Android and related software development
tools provide an easy method for a phone manufacturer to implement this feature? If
so, well done. If not, would you be interested in making this feature easy to
implement? How much do you think you would need to invest?

Your sincerely,

[Comment deleted]

As a new android user I'm shocked that the idea of having a useable alarm clock a) is seen as "too difficult" for google to implement, and b) that it's not even seen as something that google wants to implement, despite it being a standard feature of handsets for many years.  It's pretty clear from reading this forum that this is a standard feature that customers want and need (myself included), and failure to provide such a basic function can only drive market share in one direction.  Personally, if I'd known about this omission it would have been a deal-breaker.  Next time I'll go elsewhere.

thats bullcrap that google didn't look into this issue deeper... what a disappointment. the only thing that i really dont like android so far is this...

Hello,
 Device : HTC Hero on Orange UK

Apart from this it's a great phone and platform - can't we get this niggle fixed ?

Truly shocked to find this function not supported. I foolishly did not test it before buying one. (Previous phones I've had the store set the alarm and turn it off), and refused anything that did not wake up.

As a world business traveller I need a phone that will reliably wake me, go silent overnight so I can sleep, and turn off to save power when I can't get to charge it for a while.

My old HTC Vox -> Orange SPV did this very well. Is Android not good enough to compete with WM6 !

I've had Blackberry, Ericsson, Sony/Ericsson, Nokia they all work.

Algorithm is easy :
When users sets the alarm program the low power clock to 2 minutes before alarm time.
User switches off - state of all things is now well defined.
Clock turns on the device which boots while you are still gently sleeping.
Device now fully running, so it's easy for the Alarm function to go off when needed.

I agree a nice enhancement would be a setting to disable to "Alarm from Off" behaviour for anyone that concerned about the airplane/doctor/mistress situations.
Again easy to code - you just don't set the timer to turn on the device.

I'm a hardware - I helped design quite a lot of what's in these devices, please could the software team get the best out it ?

Many thanks,
Paul.

man you guys need to stop flaming google for not fixing this, they can't this is a hardware issue you need to take up with your manufacturer. Don't any of you have alarm clocks, you know like in the old days. Maybe if you guys would actually read the posts you would understand.

i need the allarm when the phone is turnf off. I won't buy android.

Very disappointed that Google can't be bothered to fix this.  Such a basic feature.

At least give us an ability to power-down to a standby state where only the alarm sounds....

[Comment deleted]

This is a basic phone requirement and is ridiculous not to have it in an expensive smartphone.  Batteries hardly last 2 days on most Android phones and not even 1 day on phones like the Desire and Evo, so I'm supposed to leave my phone on fully powered to have the alarm wake me up?  (Like I have done for a decade with other phones)

This needs to be fixed please Google

yeah fix this NIGGLE, i found myself not getting up for work so i bought an alarm clock.. surely someone should have seen this..  i love my samsung galaxy S, but the fact it cant act as a proper alarm clock is embarassing..

guys this is the shall we say the straw on the camels back.... forget about 3D, forget about the latest codec, if Android is to be a sucess, the alarm issue when a phone is switched off is CRITICAL!!!!

My SEMC Xperia X10 Mini cannot wake from an alarm, either. Utterly ridiculous, every phone I have owned since 1998 (started out with Ericsson GH688) supported this feature.

Somebody mentioned that the average desktop PC does not support timed boot from off-state. And since android phones are very much like little computers we are not to expect it on those either. Well, first off, afaik, almost every PC DOES support this feature (Wake-on-Timer), and secondly, a working alarm clock has become a standard feature which most people expect any mobile phone to have (even if it happens to have computing features).

My old Nokia 6030 does it excellently: Wakes on alarm, and then asks me if I want to switch the phone on. Thus the "privacy" argument and "a phone which is off should be off" are both irrelevant. Oh, by the way, if a phone truly was switched off the clock would not run. This is what happens if you jerk the battery out of the Nokia.

I am still in a bit of disbelief and cannot understand how this issue has been overlooked. Would absolutely not have chosen this handset, or any other Android, if I knew wake-up on timer was missing.

I just buy a new Wperia x10....and...what ??? the wake uo didn't started this morning?????? ok i have maybe done something worng.....second time again..... strange...and tjen I googled wake up android and....damn that's not supported...
I never thought it cannot work.

All my past phones work with that... never thought that new phones can't have it.
I think I will go back to my Blacblerry this week.
Smartphone need lot of power to work, to stay charged..... so if we can't turn it off during the night to rest it will be plugued to electricity all day and night.....
can't you find a way to make it work ?

(sorry for my english if some senteces are not all good)

luissitos from france

Lenovo add this future in Lephone which based on QSD8K with Android 1.6 OS

Hi,

I bought a new Android phone, unlocked, HTC Desire. The phone is very good, very easy to use and I honestly enjoy playing with it. However, smartphones have a thing, they need to actually include all the basic functions of, let's say, dumb phones, and then increase functionality with added features. This said, I, like many, have been surprised by the inability of the phone to sound the alarm when it's off. I took it for granted, as all phones I have used before had this feature.
I hope, HTC, Android, Google...whoever to solve this issue and make any Android on par with any other phone with basic features and beyond others in more advanced ones.
Best regards

I bought SE Xperia x10 and took it for granted that the phone will wake me even in the off state. The result I was late to work. Have never expected that it cannot be on the phone after 11 Nokias. The people here are saying that if the phone is off its should be off. Your phone is never completely off unless you take out the battery as it has to keep the date and time up. And having the phone give you the option of alarm when powered off and if to switch on the phone while the alarm goes off. People are arging it is not Android but the hardware, well the logical conclusion to this debate is that is it happening to multiple phones from different manufacturers, as I saw HTC, Samsung and SE which I have myself so it is not hardware problem but Android. To people opposite this idea of alarm when phone is power off - do not set up your alarm if you do not want it to go off. I bought the Xperia recently and because of this and few other little problems I am thinking of going back to my service provider and exchange this phone for Nokia N8. My SE is 1.6 version and still after a year of discussion Android cannot power it self on when I set up alarm

Just bought a HTC Desire HD with android 2.2 and fast-boot feature. Unfortunately, the alarm won't work even if it was shutdown with fastboot mode. Starting from Nokia 3310 to Nokia N95, all those cells had offered this feature, so it's easy to imagine that I'm quiete dissapointend with my new "state of the art" phone.

I have the sam e issue with a galaxy s and contacted samsung and recivied this in reply.

"Thank you for contacting Samsung Electronics.

Regarding your case, Unfortunately the wake up alarm that works when the
phone is off is not available on the Android 2.1, we can’t be sure that
this feature will be available within the next software upgrade or not
and also not sure when is it going to launch."

all we can do is pester the manufactures and force change.

I'm in the market for a smartphone, and I've only just found out about this issue. It's a big minus in my book as I do not like to leave my phone on overnight.
I will have to investigate other types of phones, and if it turns out that other phones (which do not run Android) have this feature, well, then it will unfortunately probably be "Bye-bye, Android!" for me.

It's a shame that the development team think that such a basic feature is too complicated and too useless to implement. And if that's too complicated for them, I'm not sure I have confidence in the rest of the OS.

I agree that the lack of alarm when the phone is powered off is *extremely* annoying. I've had 6 Nokia phones since 1997, and even way back then, they ALL had this feature. I prefer to switch my phone off overnight so that it isn't using up its battery and irradiating me unnecessarily or annoying me with unwanted night-time calls. for all the technical discussion above, basically it's doable if only Google and the handset manufacturers would get their fingers out and consider it a basic usability priority problem and fix it.

"Sorry folks, but this is not a feature we want to do.  There are too many unknowns"

I am sure it was really complicated trying to work out how to rank search results... but ya know - you guys worked it out ;-)

The number 1 complaint about ANY smart phone by any manufacturer, running ANY OS is... battery life.

Being able to TURN OFF your phone at night can at least DOUBLE your battery life. Most people cannot turn off their hone at night with an Android device because they need their alarm. Google refuse to implement it because it's complicated. Leaving your phone plugged in overnight (to ensure your phone doesn't run out and your alarm goes off) can also shorten the life of your LiPo/LiOn battery according to manufacturer's advice.

Anyway, this isn't the only reason for 'wake-on' alarms (as outlined in the 100+ comments above), but it is the most crucial one. Please let us smugly say to our iPhone friends "what - your iDevice can't do wake-on alarms? Shame that..." and "What, your iDevice only lasts 12 hours? Shame that..."

This is also my first non-Nokia phone - I am astounded by the poor battery life on my HTC Desire. I am disappointed by Google/Android dismissal of this so-called 'enhancement' that would significantly extend the battery life of my Android device.

Un-dismiss the ticket please.

That is all.

google shows that it has no concern about their users needs, just wished to collect data. everybody should keep their phone turned on always for google to suck data 24h/day.

I've only just bought an HTC Desire Z to replace my BlackBerry 9000. I was tired of RIM's sad excuse of an app store, sluggish OS and failure to recognise the needs of their customers. I was very happy to have jumped ship to Android until I found out about this issue. If I'm honest I am disappointed that. Such an expensive device can't do what every other smartphone is capable of! I now have to use my old phone simply as an alarm which is annoying to say the least. But the fact that Google won't address the issue is what grates at me most of all. Despite the fact that some want the feature and some don't I feel it is commonplace and as many have said it is a feature that many different types of consumer are interested in. If Google won't listen to their Android users about this then who's to say they will listen and act upon other problems? I am seriously considering returning this phone. Not because of the alarm limitations but because I think it's unacceptable that such a simple thing has been completely abandoned. Sorry Android but I have no trust in you any more and I certainly won't be recommending you to anyone.

I have HTC Desire HD with Android 2.2 and it is really annoying not to have this feature.

What I do instead of turning phone off is, I disable all connection types, mobile, wireless, GPS, etc. before going to sleep. So I save battery and have alarm.

I agree that it's ridiculous that Android phones cannot make the alarm work when the phone is off. Every Nokia phone I have ever had, going back years (before Android, before the iPhone) had an alarm that worked even when the phone was off. This was true even for Series 40 phones (that is, non-Symbian, non-smartphone, Nokia phones).

I don't care what the excuse is about it depending on the manufacturer, etc. It is obviously trivially simple to do, since Nokia did it on probably more than a hundred different devices, using different operating systems. It is pathetic that Android phones cannot do something so simple that was standard on non-smartphones from years ago.

Smartphones are supposed to be smart than normal phones, and they have the extra feature, or more advanced feature, but android OS or other smart phones do not have this basic feature, today morning i was very sleepy expecting my samsung galaxy 551 to wake me at 6 but it did not rather I heard the nearby church bell, and it rang 6 times, then i realized that its already 6, then googled on net and stumbled upon this thread, even my nokia 6151 had this facility of alarm when switched off and it also gave the option of switching the phone on or off after alarm was activated. Smartphones no doubt have extra features and can do a lot more than normal phones but they need to retain the basic important features of ordinary phones and battery backup in smartphones is a big issue, they are very power hungry ;(

This issue is so old that I can't imagine why they didn't implemented this yet... So 2.2 doesn't support it either? Nice :S

This feature is a must, please implement it.

Why on earth would anyone ever turn their phone off?  Just put it in Airplane Mode.  The screen will turn off, you won't get phone calls, emails, or text messages.  Then when you want to use your phone again bring it out of Airplane Mode.  It's the same thing as turning it off except it won't take you the better part of 5 minutes to be up and running again.  And when your alarm sounds (like you want it to because that's the whole point of this thread) you'll be able to quickly do whatever things might need to do.  Suppose your house catches fire or someone is breaking into your hotel room while your phone is off.  Good luck calling 911 anytime soon.  I'm amazed anyone is getting worked up about this.  

@marc.set
maybe you didnt turn your phone off. Maybe you were exhausted and your phone battery was dead,so you just plugged it in and went to bed. Only to wake up the following morning still pretty tired but now running late due to your alarm not sounding as you would expect.

I'm been using Nokia for over 10 years, just switched to Android recently. I am shocked that such simple function does not work here. Ok, back to the issue. If the phone couldn't be turn off completely, how about provide a low-power mode, like PC's S3 state (Suspend-to-RAM), and let only the critical programs running? Is it so hard to implement? The flight mode is close to the solution, but it still keeps many processes running that drains the battery during our sleeping.

I have recently switched to an Android base phone from Samsung Galaxy. Forget about waking up the phone while switched-off it even couldn't wake-up if the phone is in sleep or Airplane mode. What rubbish...this is a basic usability function! Andrid and Samsung should implement it without any delay or argument. Otherwise slowly the hype built around will brust!

You can't be serious... you want the phone that you just POWERED DOWN to turn back on all by itself?

I want pigs to fly... but I didn't enter an issue for it.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what the hardware/software support with regards to waking up after shut down, so I decided to do a little digging.

Not only do the Qualcomm chips used by HTC (and maybe others?) support this, but there is actually software support for it in the HTC kernels. For example in the Hero 2.1 kernel, in arch/arm/mach-msm/pm.c there is a parameter called "msm_wakeup_after" which if set to anything > 0 will cause the phone to wake up that many seconds after it has been powered down. An application (with root privileges) can use this by writing to /sys/module/pm/parameters/wakeup_after. I just tried this on my HTC Hero (rooted but running stock kernel) and it works just as expected - the phone starts up the given number of seconds after a shutdown.
Since the time is only counted after the shutdown this may not be terribly convenient but it is still possible for an alarm application (that has root) to listen for the ACTION_SHUTDOWN intent and set the wakeup timer accordingly.

What's even more interesting is in the HTC Desire 2.2 kernel (and possibly others) this is expanded with an "offmode alarm" driver which makes it easier for an application to request alarms that are active after a shut down. I haven't tested that but it looks promising.

So, the hardware supports it (at least for HTC phones), the kernel supports it, what remains is for somebody to write an alarm app (or to modify the stock one) that uses these capabilities.  And it is even possible that HTC may be working on that and include it in future versions of the stock alarm application that comes with their phones.

I noticed that the status of this bug has been set to "Declined" and closed on May 2010.
Unfortunately, on Android 2.3 this bug is still present.

Lame! I used this feature for years on my clunker sammie phone.

So it's a smart phone that you can't use as an alarm clock.

"There are too many unknowns"? C'mon Google take some leadership and figure out the unknowns.

I have a Nokia N900 smartphone/tablet which runs on Maemo 5. Even that OS supports wake on alarm.
When the alarm sounds it gives you the option to turn the device on or leave it off.

Maybe this is more of a patent issue rather than know-how?

Same here, I like to save battery by turning it off before going to bed. It's simply ridiculous not having this feature.

I don't know if this is a bug but it is definitely a major feature missing.

I'm a new Android user and I've been very surprised when the alarm didn't sound this morning, with my phone switched off. Every phone I owned had this feature and I don't have an alarm clock precisely because I already had one inside my phone. I think I'll remember to put the phone in airplane mode when I need to wake up on a schedule but I'll thank Google if I forget to do it and I'm late at something important.

I totally agree this is a major issue.

It's not only ridiculous that the feature doesn't exist but it's amazing this thread is already more than 2 years old and nothing has been done about it!!
I think everybody who faces this issue SHOULD COMMENT HERE, so google realises it's not just an issue for some 500 people, but affects (and upsets) millions of android users worldwide!

So COMMENT IF YOU WANT THIS TO CHANGE !!!!

Dude, going to refund my sgs2 as I found lack of this vital feature.

I have just purchased my first 'smart'phone and am happy with all aspects apart from this crucial feature. I missed class this morning because I turned my phone off overnight to conserve battery life (which runs out very quickly!) and the alarm didn't go off. I'm very surprised and disappointed that this basic and important feature isn't available! I had every faith that I'd only have to Google the problem to find a solution. I am going to have to carry my old phone around with me to have a functioning alarm.

I missed a meeting today due to this problem.. HTC Desire Z
I'm now browsing the internet for an alarm clock.
We passed the year 2000 10 years ago...

I don't believe that a 300 euros phone doesn't do this. After I'm doing playing with it, I'll sell it and go back to nokia

I can't believe this does not work. I just discovered the same issue on my new phone. A phone that was released in 2011, 2 years after this bug was first found.
Quite disappointed.

@46 "Does your average Linux or Windows box have this sort of capability? No. Why? Because
we're talkin OS level here - and an OS is turned of as soon as you tell your machine
to shutdown. No portion of the OS stays resident while the machine is physically
powered off. This is the case with Android as well."

I understand your point, but my motherboard BIOS does give me the option of timed power-on...

I'm thinking of a dual-boot smart phone with a proprietary simple boot (ROM with just plain phone + alarm functionality) and a complete OS (Android in this case). Booting from ROM would give the options this topic is about and the complete OS will be there for all other functionality. The little OS on ROM will also use very little of the battery because it is so simple and limited.

I agree, I want the option to turn off my Samsung Galaxy S I9000 Android phone and that it starts up to sound the alarm!

I don't want to put it in flight mode and leave the phone on. Wish Samsung or Google would come with a proper update that would fix this.

I understand the fact that we're talking about an OS, but the functionality is a need, I'm so sorry to say that even Chinesse phones have this functionality, is a shame that Android based phones doesn't have it, why I have tu put my phone in Airplane mode if I'm not going to use it?, just for the alarm?, a big bug, Windows Phone do it, it turns on to play the alarm, and the asks if you want it to turn it on or keep it off...

I agree with previous comments. My new Motorola Defy can do almost everything except waking me up in the morning, which is crucial!