Last night, Graham called me 3 times and I never even knew it because my phone was not notifying me in any way that I could see that I had a missed call. I periodically picked up my phone and pressed a button, assumming that somewhere on the display, I would get a missed call message. Nope. I only got the “unlock keypad by pressing menu and *” message. But really… the “3 missed calls” note WAS there… it was just not visible until you unlocked your phone and it popped up.
Stupid.
My roomie and he both tried to convince me that I had my phone settings wrong and tried to show me where to set “notify” or “alarm” or “reminder” to vibrate or beep. I did. We tested. Still didn’t notify me of any missed calls until AFTER I picked up the phone and unlocked it.
We all agreed that this seemed wrong, so I googled, and found the general forum chatter of people asking “how do I turn on notifications” and everyone advised everyone to do exactly what I had just done. No one ever confirmed that this had fixed their problem though.
Graham’s phone notifies him periodically. So does my roomie’s previous motorola phone. granted, the L2 is newer… but whatever.
This notification/reminder feature seems like a really basic thing. What happens if I miss a call while out of the room? What if I actually prefer NOT to physically pick up my phone and unlock it every couple of minutes to see if I missed a call?
I’m already compulsive enough when it comes to checking my email. I think my phone should be smart enough to let me know when I missed a call. So did Graham. So did my room mate.
So I called Cingular. Cingular claimed that the L2, and most other motorola cell phones, do not have a feature to notify people of missed calls OTHER than that missed call message. They referred me to Motorola.
So I called Motorola, who had me do a master reset, and told me to change the alert and reminder settings just like everyone told me to. So I hung up, tested it, and discovered that it had not in fact restored (created?) any audio or buzz missed call notification.
I called Motorola back, and described the situation. What followed was a long round-about conversation about how according to whoever he talked to while he put me on hold, no motorola phone has this “missed call reminder” notification.
Graham’s phone does. I told him the model.
He replied with “perhaps older models have it, but the L2 and other phones with its OS don’t”.
So I asked him for more detail like, “what’s the difference between ‘notify’ and ‘reminders’. After putting me on hold again for about 15 minutes (no joke. Dean called me and talked with me for a while while I was on phone), he finally replied that one is for notifying you of text messages, and the other is for your calendar reminders…. which is slightly funny because I realize now that I mis-asked my question. My phone doesn’t have a ‘notify’ setting. It has “alarm” and “reminder”. So… how on earth he figured out that “notify” means “for text messages” is beyond me. Maybe that’s why I was on hold for so long. He was off inventing truth somewhere in a motorola back room. :)
So… in conclusion, the Motorola cell phones don’t have any audible “missed call” reminder or notification whatsoever. it’s not a bug, and it’s also not user error.
This feature simply doesn’t exist.
Travis | 17-Oct-06 at 10:14 am | Permalink
Hey. So, I don’t you if you’ve tried the following, but I’m fairly confident that phone will remind you of missed calls and/or voicemail.
Actually after re-reading your post it sounds like you may have tried this… But I couldn’t tell where in the menu you were, so I’ll suggest this anyway.
Also, my phone would wait several minutes before it would remind me. Maybe 5+ minutes between beeps.
If you go into Menu, Settings, Audio, select the ring style you usually use (or make this change to all of them), Scroll down to the ring style Detail menu and hit Change, Go to the bottom of the list to Reminders.
This can be a Vibration or a Beep. It will go off every 5 minutes or so. It should remind/notify you of reminders normally on the screen like New Voicemail or Missed Call. You also should not have to unlock the keypad for this to work.
The way I understand it, the new motos like the L2, Razr, Pebl, my V551, they all use the same OS. The only difference is firmware version and what not. But the actual software should be much the same from one phone to another.
Maybe this will work… Good luck!
-Travis
PS: Hope I didn’t completely just tell you what you already tried. =)
emily | 17-Oct-06 at 11:35 am | Permalink
This is exactly the steps that I tried, that the forums I found suggested, and that cingular, motorola, and my friends showed me.
Afterwhich, Motorola then came back and told me that this feature does not exist and that “reminders” are for the calendar only.
Anyway. thanks anyway. I’m actually convinced it’s a software bug, and that the behavior you describe really is how it should be. They just won’t/can’t admit it’s some sort of bug perhaps.
Travis | 17-Oct-06 at 1:14 pm | Permalink
Oh that’s a bunch of crap. I’ve had issues with Mororola before and they just don’t know what they’re doing. They should own up to their software bugs.
Have you looked into modifying the firmware of you phone? It’s actually quite common/popular in the motorola cell phone community. There are different hexadecimal values you can modify that make the OS do different things. Many of the more common modifications are presets in the software and with one click you can write the change to the phone.
It’s also nice for doing things like deleting the builtin moto pictures and sounds if you don’t want them.
If nothing else it’s at least interesting to read about. There’s info available on howardforums.com and www.motomodders.net. I’ve also got the USB cable if you decide to tryout the software to look at the phone’s OS.
Or if you wanted to get really nerdy, you could setup call forwarding from your cell phone to an Asterisk server that you could setup. Then have the server forward the call to voicemail, and have it automatically text message your phone every five minutes saying “you missed a call.” Then all you have to do is when you’re gonna be away from your phone, hit call forwarding and you’re golden.
And if you wanted to get really *really* nerdy you could modify the phone’s OS to automatically enable call forwarding during a period of inactivity, much like a gaim auto away message.
emily | 17-Oct-06 at 4:12 pm | Permalink
Wow. you are awesome. I’ll definitely look into some of these things.
What software do you use to transfer files to your phone? I’ve got several USB cables from various cameras and mp3 players I’ve had over the years, but no drivers for the phone yet.
/me runs off to read stuff and… also to continue working until it’s time to go home.
FlyingGuy | 17-Oct-06 at 5:31 pm | Permalink
Hey Em,
Buy an older Nokia Phone. Not only will it give you your list of missed calls it will:
1. As you press keys, it will continue the search for a name as in:
type in : e m i l y
I will land on Emily’s phone number ( if ONLY I had it! ), instead of taking you to the first entry of names starting with each letter of your name.
Motorola phones are just shit shit shit!
Nokia RULES - at least the older ones do. No Camera, No movies, no crap to get in the way, it just makes phone calls. HEY, its a phone!
- B
emily | 17-Oct-06 at 5:48 pm | Permalink
A little late to look into Nokia. I already bought my L2. I love the phone so far except for the annoying lack of “missed call” buzz/beep. heh.
Not that interested in switching unless you (or someone else) want to give me one for free. :)
FlyingGuy | 17-Oct-06 at 6:54 pm | Permalink
I’ll be ya huckleberry.
Travis | 18-Oct-06 at 8:38 am | Permalink
Theres software called Mobile Phone Tools, and pktools.. the usual .zip file for pktools has the USB drivers for the phone. It will install it as a modem in windows XP and give you a couple other devices that once you launch the communications software it will interface with the phone. It’s been a while since I’ve done any of it, but it was pretty simple to figure out.
That’s the other thing… I’ve only done this on XP. I don’t think it can be done in Ubuntu, and I’ve never tried in OSX.
Feel free to IM me if you’ve got questions. I’m sure I can dig up some of my old documentation or something.
Autarchex | 20-Oct-06 at 12:34 am | Permalink
Finally I have a reason (aside from poverty) to be glad I opted for the free piece of crap LG phone that verizon foisted on me.
Ben Bleything | 25-Oct-06 at 9:25 am | Permalink
Motorola phones suck. Suck suck suck suck suck suck suck. Get a Sony Ericsson, best phones out there.
You can probably sell your on CL or ebay… heh.
emily | 25-Oct-06 at 4:39 pm | Permalink
If there are decent Ericsson phones that DON’T HAVE A CAMERA and are under $200 and work with cingular, I’d look into it. suggestions?
Cingular is sending me a new motorola L2 because I was pretty aggressively insisting that there are Things Wrong with mine.
pwned.
Eric | 15-Nov-06 at 3:14 pm | Permalink
I have a Motorola Razr V3c, which Does have an audible alert, about every 5 minutes I think, to notify me of a missed call (even if no voice mail was left). I also had a Moto V60g, which also have that feature.
Just yesterday, I emailed Nokia, asking why their phones don’t have this essential feature. They thanked me for my suggestion.
I wanted to get a T-Mobile Nokia 6133, but feel I will have to get a Motorola, becase I must have this audible alert for missed calls.
Pam | 24-Oct-08 at 8:18 am | Permalink
I am so glad to have found your webpage. I’ve been trying forever to find the notification sounds…I guess we just don’t have them is right.
Thanks for the great info.
Cindy | 13-Nov-08 at 7:24 pm | Permalink
My Sanyo SCP-8400 has a feature of an audio alert for missed calls, missed texts, etc. It is quite old and I am now searching for a new phone. Does anyone have any suggestions? (My carrier is Sprint if that makes any difference)