There was widespread alarm on Twitter last night as midnight struck and iPhone users who had timed alarms to go off at 00.00 on 1 January 2011 discovered an issue with the breakthrough Apple smartphone device. The alarm didn’t ring.
The issue echoes a similar problem discovered in November when a Daylight Savings Time iPhone bug hit European owners of the handset, making iPhone alarms go off an hour later than usual.
It is suspected the failure of iPhones to ring in the New Year has something to do with a problem with the latest iOS 4.2 iPhone operating system and a patch from Apple may resolve the problem.
A wider iOS problem?
The problem has exposed a bigger problem in that one-off alarm settings won’t function at least until the alarm clock issue fixes itself on 3 January, according to tests run by 9to5Mac.
Until then users will have to manually set up the days they want their alarms to go off.
The issue appears to be occurring on iOS 4.1 and iOS 4.2 device, but not on earlier iOS 3x devices.
Apple has confirmed that there was an issue with non-recurring alarms on 1 or 2 January and said the situation should be resolved from 3 January onwards.
