Calendar notification FAIL

[Symbiote]

(Incredible running SkyRaider Sense 3.5)

I have an issue with my GMail-synced calendar notifications firing unreliably on my Incredible. I have several synced calendars on the GMail account, and this issue is sporadic and is not tied to a particular calendar's events. All calendars' notifications fire sometimes, but not always.

This Is A Problem.

I have confirmed that the timezones are all set appropriately (phone & calendar are on the same page, so to speak).

The events on the Google Calendars are individually set for pop-up reminders 24 hours out (ie. this isn't just using the Google Calendar default notification for events). The phone's calendar shows the events having the expected bell icon, and drilling into the event it shows that there is a 24 hour notification configured (just as expected). It just doesn't fire on the phone. I can get the event notifications to fire by editing the event on the phone, changing the notification time setting, backing out ("Event saved"), and then changing it back to "24 hours". At this point, the Calendar "remembers" it was supposed to fire the event notification and does so.

Examining the event in the Google Calendar (web) after this "change/change back" cycle does not show the event as shifted in time, which would be the expected result if there were a time zone mismatch between web & phone.

I have cleared the Calendar Storage app's data and resynced but this has not resolved the issue. A final note, if it matters: the events were all created via the web interface and pulled down to the phone via sync.

Any ideas?

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[jkhonea]

Have you tried another ROM to narrow down if this is might be a ROM specific problem? If not, that would be the first place I would say to start checking. Then we can start narrowing it down from there.

[Symbiote]

Have you tried another ROM to narrow down if this is might be a ROM specific problem? If not, that would be the first place I would say to start checking.

Thanks for your quick reply.

Ouch. That's a fairly severe step to take... wiping the cached data/apps, reinstallation, reconfiguring all the settings on phone, etc. I would be loathe to start there. Generally, if an OS-bundled app is giving me issues on my PC, my reaction isn't to drop-kick the computer and reinstall Linux to see if something changes in the particular app's behavior.

I am cognizant of the ability to roll back to my current state via nandroid backup. However, I was hoping that I was not the only user who was experiencing these issues and that others might chime in with a simple fix. Is SkyRaider known to be a flaky ROM? I have had no other trouble so far (data sync and other apps' notifications work fine).

Again, thank you for your diagnostic suggestion. I will have to weigh whether the diagnostic regimen is more painful than the current unreliable calendar issue.

[Symbiote]

The issue seems to have cleared up. As it was intermittent (there was no reliable test case to demonstrate the bug), I don't have a definite probable cause.

For historical purposes, I suggest others who experience this issue try several things:

• Clear data from the CalendarStorage app & resync (several times)
• Don't use the Hibernate functionality in SR
• Disable SetCPU

I had already done the CalendarStorage clear/resync several times before my original post. Perhaps those initial attempts weren't "good enough", but that seems like a stretch. All the events were present on the calendar after each clear/resync, yet the event notifications remained sporadically unreliable.

As for Hibernation, I love that feature. Anecdotally, everything seemed fine with it and I had no apparent stability issues on multiple hibernate/resume cycles. I also had several successful notifications that fired immediately upon resume (ie. the phone was hibernating when the event was supposed to fire, but it "caught up" correctly upon resume and fired the notification as expected).

I wasn't doing anything crazy with SetCPU, by my estimation. I did have a profile configured to crank the CPU down to the minimum when the screen was off, but I don't perceive why this would have an effect on a queued timer interrupt.

Good luck to anyone else who experiences this issue.

[Symbiote]

Have you tried another ROM to narrow down if this is might be a ROM specific problem? If not, that would be the first place I would say to start checking. Then we can start narrowing it down from there.

I spoke too quickly when I claimed the issue had been apparently resolved.

I followed your suggestion and installed a new ROM (Redemptive rEVOlution 2.2) last weekend. Notifications seemed to be working fine; however, I just had a notification that fired 168 minutes later than it was supposed to — ie. the notification fired at 11:48, but it was supposed to fire at 09:00.

The phone was on the whole time and had been awake several times, for minutes on end, during the hours after the appointed notification firing time. The phone had approximately 16 hours of uptime [sic] at the point where the delayed notification fired. Again, I doubt this is a TZ issue, especially because the misfired time was not an integer number of hours offset.

[mjs31]

Please assure me you are not running any kind of task killer?

[mountainbikermark]

Which calendar app are you using? Pure Grid Calendar widget (uses Sense to add events) does that on my non rooted. if I set the event thru it (no reminder problem you wrote ) or if I have the reminder time set to anything other than 24 hours it sounds 25 hours before then nothing at the proper time.
I've started using Business Calender Beta and it's fine.

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[Symbiote]

Please assure me you are not running any kind of task killer?

Haha, no task killer. I did some research into them back when I got the phone, but read enough about Android to realize they are counterproductive. I got rid of the VZW crapware by rooting and installing a ROM instead. In terms of what has been done to the phone, it's essentially the "stock" RR 2.2 ROM. I don't even run SetCPU anymore (HeyItsLou recommends against it on his kernel).

Which calendar app are you using?

Just the stock Sense calendar app. I used the same app when I was on SR 3.5.

The 7 calendars I use are split between one GMail and one Google Apps account (hosted organizational GMail). Calendar event notifications seem similarly flaky no matter which calendar/account they are associated with.

[Symbiote]

The Android calendar system is essentially worthless to me at this point. It outright failed to notify on my latest three events. At all. Each of the events happened to be on a different calendar... so, three separate calendars, each with a failed notification event.

It seems that the calendar is best suited for "showing you which scheduled events you forgot about because it failed to fire the simple reminder task".

It's the future: perhaps I should just tie a piece of string around my finger to remind me of my scheduled events, because $DEITY knows Android is no help. As a matter of fact, Android is worse than a piece of string—by performing sporadically, Android lulls me into complacency by subconsciously prompting me to trust it.

How much use would your wakeup alarm clock be if it failed to go off at the appointed time several times a week?

So, are there any recommendations for an Android calendar that doesn't use the Android CalendarStorage subsystem, yet provides sync with Google Calendar, itinerary widgets, etc? I couldn't tell if Pure Grid Calendar still uses that CalendarStorage backend.

[templetonryecy]

I agree 100% that the calendar notification system on the Incredible is pure garbage. I have trained myself to setup all my google calendar events to remind me via email. So every time I expect a calendar reminder, it comes in the form of a message in my Gmail inbox and of course the Gmail notification on my D-Inc. I guess you could setup an SMS reminder also...