Hi all,
This is a cool phone and all, but i'm on the verge of returning it because of one completely ridiculous feature: I'm a using Cingular in the US and after any transaction, be it making a call or receiving a text message, I get a notification on the phone letting me know how much it cost and what my account balance is. This would just be a minor irritation if it weren't for the fact that when it does this, it plays the 'notify' sound, at near to full volume, regardless of any of the phone's sound settings.
This essentially makes the phone useless for me a good portion of the time as the only way to shut it up during a meeting or whatever is to power it down completely.
I've tried disabling every windows sound setting i could find, putting it on silent, vibrate, whatever, that notification (appears as a bubble next to the connection strength icon with the heading "Phone") will always play, always full volume. In desperation i tried deleting notify.wav from \Windows through activesync and total commander, but it's write protected and you can't change its attributes. Cingular themselves call it a feature of their prepaid plan and can't disable it despite my railing.
Anyway, if anyone has any ideas that I can use to disable this stupid "feature", registry or otherwise, I'd LOVE to hear it.
Threaten Cingular saying that you let the whole world know that they are not willing to work with customers under any circumstances after the money is in their hands because of your simple request to have them remove a simple unwanted feature.
There are 2 reasons I say this:
1) Since "Cingular themselves call it a feature of their prepaid plan" it will happen regardless of any phone you use from them.
2) PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
(It may not go your way as seen in reason 2 - but at the same time after seeing reason 2 would you buy a motorcycle from that company that resides in Milwaukee WI. or recommend that anybody else you know do the same? )
Well I thought about that, but from cingular it's just a clunky product and second rate customer service, which, you know, happens.. The fact that I can't control the sounds my phone makes is a little more ridiculous. It basically doesn't have a silent mode, and should. So that's what I'm focussing on.
zwitterion said:
it plays the 'notify' sound, at near to full volume, regardless of any of the phone's sound settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Once again, this is not the fault of the phone but Cingular overriding the settings in their "feature of their prepaid plan".
----
When speaking to them about this do it in a polite mild tone manner.
Here is what I would do:
I would call customer service and ask to speak with their supervisor.
When that person gets on the phone, ask for their supervisor.
Repeat process as many times until you can get no further - each person will be more reluctant to bump you up.
Once you get the highest person you can speak with, they will be more willing to listen to your issues because it has reached them.
Focus on their inability to remove unnecessary features - that cause disruptions during important meetings because of a SMS sent - at the customer's request & poor customer service (that is reason why you wanted to speak with the highest person possible.)
Do not focus on the phone itself because it will happen on all their phones.
Also tell them that you have plenty of friends that are not happy with their current provider and are asking everybody about their provider & calling plans (leave it at that - that is making a threat towards them without actually saying it - let them think it).
If nothing gets resolved, then revert to STEP 2 in my previous post.
Thanks for the advice longhair, I might get to the point of doing that. Right now though I'm more interested in the phone itself - Cingular after all just broadcast crap over the air - it's the phone's decision what to do with those signals, and right now that decision is "torpedo useability with an intrusive and unmodifiable notification noise". I write software, i'm pretty sure that somewhere in this little brick of transistors & code is a way to make for a real silent mode, I just need to figure out how.
zwitterion said:
- Cingular after all just broadcast crap over the air - it's the phone's decision what to do with those signals, and right now that decision is "torpedo useability with an intrusive and unmodifiable notification noise.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By what you are describing, the phone itself is not the problem but the provider - Cingular in this case.
I am using T-Mobile with the same phone and the service is much better than I had with Orange (Cingular's name out here).
Good luck and keep us updated
sorry i can't help with the sound issues - sounds rubbish! ... but you could try putting your phone into flight mode when in meetings etc to save you fully resetting it!! at least until you find a solution to the problem... stick with it!
I used ActiveSync to explore to \windows under 'My Device' and copied notify.wav to my desktop. I then used an audio editor to make it silent and copied it back.
Now when I get the notifications it still plays the notify.wav but it is silent. You could change it to any sound you wanted. The reason you couldn't delete it was that it was read-only.
I didn't try deleting the file itself but I would guess it would work. If not just replace it with a silent wav file...
Yeah that's what I ended up doing. Well actually I created an empty.wav, copied it to the phone, searched the registry for the ref to the notify sound, changed it to point to empty.wav and bob was my uncle.. I had trouble overwriting notify.wav itself due to permissions.
Can anyone post the key to edit to get rid of the notify.wav sound? I have a Cingular ipaq hw6515 and if I edit the only key that has the notify.wav value I still get the same anoying sound. The file is protected by windows, so I cant delete or edit it to make it silent. I just called Cingular and they say its a feature and there is no way to turn it off.....Thanks
i THINK the key was 'InCallBuzz' from memory but I don't remember where it was.
Humm, I had changed it and it didnt do anything. I will delete some of the keys to see whats gonna happen. Im crossing my fingers.... thanks for the tip anyway
didnt do anything, even after a soft reboot.... must be a Cingular custom setting....
keep in mind that if you change the InCallBuzz.Sound key to something completely bogus (or delete it), your phone will play some default sound anyway. That's why I had to change it to 'empty.wav' and make sure there was an empty.wav on the phone.
Dudes, thanks for all your help. I went back to XP rather than Vista, and the XP explorer allowed me to change the notify.wav file. Now I have a silent file instead of the original and it works perfectly.
I guess Vista is less permissive than XP.
Again, thanks for all your help.
Interesting that Vista turned out to be the difference...
For those without access to XP, I wrote an installer cab to do the replace.
It should replace the notify.wav with a silent one then ask you to reboot the device. I tested it out on my HTC Wizard and it works. Really the only work it is doing is copying one file so it should just work but you never know...
-jalex9
Does anyone know of any register hack to remove the notification balloon as well?
Suppressing the notification message
See my post: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=2248890
-Kevin
Something is not right ... !!!
I have the same phone, and the same service, and the same bloody horrible notification messages everytime I so much as look at my handset - it tells me that did not cost anything and my balance is ...
However, something is not right with your handset because I can control the volume of the notify message when it arrives - it plays at whatever volume my handset is set to.
Sorry I can't tell you why, I am not very technical, but I thought you might like to know it should not play at full volume.
As a second matter of interest, I have also been talking to Cingular about turning the bloody message thing off.
I did not have to change the notify sound to an empty wav. Just did the reg edit to kill the bubble (linked to above) and it killed the sound as well. Also, worth mentioning is the cab file (above) cannot be un-installed if you decide you want your sound back for any reason so you'd need to manually undo what it does.
I mention this because I was having trouble with something on my phone keeping my phone awake after the notification (sound & bubble) popped up. After the reg edit, the notification still gets sent to your phone and, if it's in standby, wakes it up. You just won't hear the sound or see the bubble. Without the sound, I quickly realized I did not know my phone was sitting in my pocket with the backlight on. I needed my sound back! No big deal really, but should be noted so there are no surprises.
I finally found the program keeping my phone awake after the notification was port splitter. So, I changed some settings and put back the reg edit. Now I have no balloon and no sound when the notification arrives. When Cingular sends it to my phone, it lights up full for 30 seconds then dims then goes completely dark into standby mode.
Hurray! I hated that "feature" even though I could control it's loudness by lowering the whole phone's volume. I also hated OK-ing out of the bubble all the time. Thanks sdkevin for the simple reg edit that killed two birds with one stone!
Hi guys,
I have a Touch HD (running Dutty 2.9 right now) and there one thing that I just don't understand about this model as well as all the other smartphones out there. The Touch HD has some of the most advanced hardware specifications in the industry, the Windows Mobile OS can practically run any kind of software we can think of, and yet the notifications for basic things like missed call and new SMS message are from the stone age. I swear my old Sony K750 had much better ways of notifying me I had missed stuff on the phone.
I want to be able to select on my Touch HD what kind of alerts to receive when I get a missed call. I want to set the phone to ring an alert every X minutes, vibrate every Y minutes, flash the LED light and so on until I see what call I missed. If a get a new SMS while I'm not in the room, I'd like my phone to play the "New text message" every M minutes until I read it, as well as vibrate from time to time.
These are just examples. I just want a better notification method, one as advaced and customisable as the phone itself and its OS. Obviously MS isn't doing anything about it (and it's for small reasons such as this one that they've lost so many customers to iPhones or other devices), so does anyone know a good software that does what I require?
PS: after flashing Dutty 2.9, the screen turns on whenever I receive a new SMS. This is driving me crazy, since it's pressing stuff inside the pouch. I'm sure I've seen the option to disable this somewhere, but where? I can't find it anymore...
I am looking for a piece of software that will ring or sound an alarm based on input from the G sensor. I have a young child who seems intent on picking up every gadget he sees. I would like for my phone to ring/alarm if the phone is moved. Does anyone know of such a program? I have a Samsung Omnia so the HTC program isn't completely compatible I do not believe. Is there such a piece of software available for non HTC devices?
ask the developer for the g-alarm to do it for you
http://www.ageye.de/
there is an app named "don't touch me" that should do what you want.
http://mobile.dlugosz.net.pl
I have Dont Touch Me, but it is made for HTC devices. I will run on the Omnia using HTCEmu but it will not function if the screen is off, or when in standby. it also does not allow the phone to go into standby when tis running thus killing the battery since the screen remains on. It is a good program just not made for non HTC devices
there are apps to remote wipe a stolen phone, locate it via GPS, all sorts of things, but there doesn't seem to be anything that will simply cause the phone to ring loudly if it is taken by someone who is not authorized to do so. I would like to keep my phone from being taken at point A, instead of only having an option to do something after the phone is already at point B.
I have purchased a device, one X, but I did not see features in the system impressive when seen on the subject of galaxy S3 See some of the properties that characterize the system ((i say the system and not the device)) my question for programmers and developers you can add features that our system beloved of (one x) and such
1 Property of lock the device (which is linked to eye)
2 Feature video calling(
It's supposed to be present because the camera front available)
3 Face to open the device footprint
And many things I do not remember
It is well known that the device (OneX) features a powerful Hardware
But I do not see anything useful on the system
You need the Samsung eye sensor hardware to use the screen on feature. There are apps for video calling. I didn't know HTC removed face unlock but it should be in most of the dev os. Sense is not going to grow much on this so if you need Samsung then sell before it drops value any further.
My one x has face unlock, go to settings then security then screen lock and pick face unlock.
Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2
IN GALASY S3
There is a new property which is not mentioned when the arrival of a new message and the message you want to contact the owner all played by the lifting device directly at the ear and it will automatically connect to the owner of the message
samsung only. just tap the persons name at the top of the message and hit the green call button
kasserx said:
I have purchased a device, one X, but I did not see features in the system impressive when seen on the subject of galaxy S3 See some of the properties that characterize the system ((i say the system and not the device)) my question for programmers and developers you can add features that our system beloved of (one x) and such
1 Property of lock the device (which is linked to eye)
2 Feature video calling(
It's supposed to be present because the camera front available)
3 Face to open the device footprint
And many things I do not remember
It is well known that the device (OneX) features a powerful Hardware
But I do not see anything useful on the system
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Video calling IS available. You just need an app like Skype or Fring. Do note that carriers are moving away from "video calls" and are servicing video calls through your 3g data connection instead. Years ago, phone plans included credit for calls, sms and VIDEO calls. They don't do that anymore. It's all through your data plan/Wi-Fi now.
kasserx said:
IN GALASY S3
There is a new property which is not mentioned when the arrival of a new message and the message you want to contact the owner all played by the lifting device directly at the ear and it will automatically connect to the owner of the message
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very gimmicky. Just like Facetime and Siri, it's something that will rarely be used outside of the first week/month.
phil112345 said:
samsung only. just tap the persons name at the top of the message and hit the green call button
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think Samsung has people hypnotized. I mean seriously, your hands are already on the phone working in either a contact, e-mail, or text. So how difficult is it to press the dial key or long press and then the dial key? They slap a name (Direct Dial) on holding the phone to your ear instead and people are awe struck. And what is it going to do if there are four numbers listed for a contact? By the time it asks you which one you want and to confirm pressing the dial key would have been faster.
I'm curious to see what kind of battery life the phone gets. Keeping all these sensors active 24/7 waiting to detect movement or watch you blink has to take a toll on battery life. That and S-Voice constantly listening in case you say something.
Don't get me wrong, some of the soft features their introducing are cool; but they're not life changing (to me). I had Vlingo and it was neat but I never used it and activating the listen feature just killed the battery in the i9100.
So I've just got a OP3, moving from a Lumia 930 and several years with Microsoft mobile OS's and am trying to find a few answers about my new toy. I've searched Google but can't seem to find the answers I'm looking for.
Here goes, please don't flame me:
1. WP allowed me to automatically set quiet hours so only select contacts could get through and I wasn't bothered by notifications at night. I can't seem to find this option despite several walk throughs, the options listed aren't there. I know I can use the slider but sometimes when you go to bed tired you forget
2. Also looking for driving mode, when connected to Bluetooth the phone would only allow calls and texts to notify to stop distractions from other notifications.
3. Music player randomly opens, bit embarrassing when it fires up in the middle of a meeting
4. Phone screen doesn't always go off when taking a call, though this only seems to happen if I was using an app at the time the call came in.
5. I want to be able to block calls without installing an app, surely this should be a standard feature?
Think that's it currently, still getting my head around how to do things on Android and I'm sure there'll be more questions though hopefully I'll be able to find the answers myself
Thank you in advance
I can give you a few answers / recommendations. First take a look at an app called Silence Premium in the app store. This provides similar functionality to the slider but also allows the function to be time based. For example I have it set to silence all and only allow calls to come through after 11pm. At 6am I have it automatically un-silence all. This way I eliminate all the dings and beeps from Email or texts once I go to bed. The slider still functions normally as well. This should cover your first question. Note the trial version of the app is called Do not Disturb. Not sure why they chose different names for the paid and free versions.
For your second option, I use an app called Tasker to automatically enable an auto-reply to any texts that come in while driving. This feature is automatically enabled and disabled upon connecting to the Bluetooth in the car. Tasker is a pretty powerful app and can do a ton of different things. However it does have a bit of a learning curve and can definitely be intimidating. A similar app exists called Automate that might provide similar functionality. I haven't used it yet so can't really comment.
Hope this helps.