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HTC Alarms Fixed! – Don’t Know Why

Factory reset my Surround a couple weeks ago to research/resolve a Live Tile issue and when I reinstalled my 140+ plus apps/games I left about 20 off, thinning things out a bit. One of the apps I did not reinstall was Attentive Phone, a utility exclusive to HTC devices that offers a few options when answering or talking on a call. I originally installed this app a few days after getting my phone at launch (actually I installed all the HTC apps initially). Shortly after I discovered that my phone would freeze if I tried using the built-in Alarm function and the phone was not on charge, requiring a soft reset.  DavidK originally reported the problem here. and I followed up after more testing here. Based on the feedback from readers, this alarm bug appeared to affect all HTC WP7 devices. My guess is a good number of users installed many of the HTC free apps.

Well I finally got around to testing my alarm and guess what. It works! I have done everything I can to cause a failure. Letting the alarm ring out for up to five minutes, tapping snooze several times, etc. So far, my alarm has gone off 15+ times in the past three days and no freezeups, or muting which was another result if the phone had recently been soft reset. I have read a few posts from users about Attentive Phone being the culprit, and I did try removing that app for a week with no success. As HTC has “admin” privileges with their apps, my guess it that an install changes something on the phone, which does not get changed back when deleting the app. Thanks HTC for that. Based on the below comments, not sure if Attentive Phone has anything to do with my alarm suddenly working.

So I can’t say for sure my alarm finally working is directly related to Attentive Phone or instead my factory reset, but as the trouble started almost immediately I am leaning towards this app being the bad guy. Thank you Microsoft for “not” auto-installing this lemon after my reset. The app is currently at v1.12.0.0, so the any bug may have been corrected, but as HTC has never responded to my email inquiry or my post in their forums, I am not willing to find out, and I suggest you proceed with caution. For clarification, I have not gotten any phone updates yet (thank AT&T for that) and my phone is still running the same firmware I had out of the box.

So, if you have an HTC device and you “never” installed Attentive Phone or have hard reset recently, without installing this app, does your Alarm work (not on charge) without freezing or turning off your sound?

BTW, I have also had problems with my phone getting all whacky when plugging in headphones or powered speakers while playing music or a video. Things like the volume jumping to max and then shooting back down to zero and staying there, regardless of what I tried to do with the volume control. Well this is another one that I can’t recreate since the hard reset. Don’t know why it’s working but I am not complaining. I did install HTC’s Sound Enhancer after my reset, so don’t think that app is contributing to either of these issues. But if Attentive Phone broke one thing, chances are it broke several.

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