I ran into the same problem with mine the other day as well. Came close to turning off the phone so I knew it would have power during the train ride home. I got lucky, and made it to the car (after a full day and nearly a 1 hr train ride to the station) with about 12% left.

This is a 3G/Edge conflict issue. No doubt in my mind… as soon as the WM6 upgrade is released for the Cingular 750, I’m all over it… I may also look to buy an extended battery.

What I’m looking for:

* Vibration support
* Single screen showing status of (aprox) 10 different alarms with functionality to be able to quickly disable and enable the alarms
* Simple UI to set new alarms
* Volume settings separate from the system volume:
– I want to be able to set a “vibrate only alarm” that
really won’t make a single sound even if my system
volume is at maximum.
– I want to be able to set a “Sound” alarm that will
make a noise regardless of the system volume.

There are so many WM5 alarm / clock applications out there and believe me I’ve been playing with all of them. They all seem to be able to support one or two of the above needs but never all of them. Here’s what I’ve found:

Spb Time
– No vibration support.

Rivia Gentimer
– Loads slowly.
– Doesn’t support vibrations.
– Awful UI.
– Ridiculous procedure to set the days to sound an alarm – you have to create a named schedule profile (!). How redundant is a named recurrence for days of the week? Nothing beats the conciseness of reusing “SMTWTFS” and simply inserting ‘-’ where appropriate.

Chronos
– Quite fast.
– Supports vibrations very well – lots of customizations.
– For some reason won’t allow me to set the vibrations to continue for very long so after a few seconds the notification is on screen but the vibes have stopped. If I’m still asleep that’s a major problem.

Delmar Alarm Clock
– No vibration support.

Is it really that tough? Why do all the coders creating clock applications think that the most important thing to all PPC users is “support for MP3 files”?

I think I am going to go buy a cheap bedside clock as a backup

If alarms went off at full volume regardless of system volume, then you may have problems with alarms sounding at in appropriate times; or louder than you want given the situation that you’re in. For example, you set an alarm to remind you to leave work early; but get pulled into an ad-hoc meeting before its time to go. The subject is serious and you forget to silence your phone. All of a sudden… BING-BONG! Not good.

MS doesn’t give us an option for controlling a third volume level (System, vs. Phone vs. Alarm). You only get the first two. The thought behind this is that your system volume level is sufficient for your alarms. I know you almost missed your train. The only thing I can say is that you need to make certain you turn your volume up before you go to bed.