Samsung S7 making random beep like morse code 'x' i.e. "long short short long" or da-di-di-da

[fbleichenbacher]

A couple of weeks ago my S7 started to make a sound like morse code 'x' at a relatively low pitch, i.e. no high frequency tone. I cannot recall having installed any 3rd party app that could have triggered this. The beeping occurs at random intervals, varying between 15 minutes and several hours (yesterday at 15:37, 15.55, 16:20, 16:39, 17:40 etc.) and is particularly annoying at 4 a.m. or so. It also occurs when the phone is on "do not disturb", which I have activated for the night hours (11pm-5am). There is no message displayed with it either, and I am unable to relate it to any incoming message, alarm or notification. Also, it is not related to NFC or any other wireless signal (WiFi, BT, SmartThings) as I have disabled them one by one, but the beeping still went on. It occurs spontaneously, independent of location (bedroom, office, kitchen, out of the house...) and is independent of the phone being moved or sitting still.

Assuming that there is nobody out there who has the same phenomenon, does anyone of you, dear readers, know of any tool which could track the origin of such beeps and thus giving me a clue as to what could cause it? Caramba, it just beeped again :-((

[fbleichenbacher]

Wow, now that's an interesting piece of information. I also have the Khaleej Times app installed on my S7, as I had been living in Abu Dhabi for a while and still follow the news from there even though I am back in Switzerland. So maybe we found the culprit. As I said earlier, the beep has disappeared on my device after booting into safe mode and back, but I did not change anything on the KT app. But you never know...

[Domi15]

thanks i deleted it also and it worked so far 🙂

[charlo]

Hi - so an update.  The beeps seem to seemed to go away after leaving phone in Safe Mode for a few hours as advised in earlier post (didn't work when tried first but rebooted into Safe Mode a couple of times and left it for a couple of hours).  AND I also had the dreaded Khaleej Times app installed!  And Google Play tells me it was updated 6 days ago (19 April) so that aligns with when this started for me...  I still have the app installed but the issue has stopped....  Thanks to all who posted here - not being able to figure this out was worse than the actual beeps!

[Absenta]

My girlfriend has the same problem with her S10+. It sounds every day at 15:37. It's the only notification that it sounds since she has the notification sound disabled. So we notice it every day because it's impossible to miss. I installed nice catch and I can't see anything being caught by the app. This is quite annoying. BTW: The phone doesn't have the Khaleej Times app

I have the S20+ but it doesn't happen to my phone.

[fbleichenbacher]

Now here's the latest development in this issue: After not having used the Khaleej Times app for a while, I was using it again today, for about 20 minutes. And sure enough the da-di-di-da sound started up again, too! So I tried to track it down further. I went into Setting-Apps-Khaleej Times by started to play around with the settings of the app, randomly, with no plan in mind. I cleared the cache, cleared the data, removed its permissions to storage and calendar, turned off background data usage. After doing all this, the sound came up again, but this time it was accompanied by a visual notification on the information bar on top of the screen, which is actually persistent, meaning that it stays there, and I can open it. It says "Over 60'000 Pakistanis registered to go go home from UAE", accompanied by the KT logo. I also noticed in the app settings that the App Notifications are set to "ON", also the app icon badges and News are set to "ON". So I conclude that in my case it's definitely the Khaleej Times app which is the source of this sound. Next step is to turn its notifications to OFF and see what happens. If the da-di-di-da still continues I shall uninstall the app, as ultima ratio.

As some of you readers do not have the KT app installed I assume it must be some other app which, triggered by a news feed, produces this sound.  The challenge will be to find the culprit.

Cheerio. 

[Brooks]

Yup, I have the super annoying noise as well.  Been driving me batty for the past few weeks so turned off the audible notifications, which is not ideal. 

I have Khaleej Times on my phone and deleted it.  Thanks for identifying this.  I will return and comment further if that turns out to not be the solution.   

[R22]

Hi, i have the same problem and just read on another forum that this morse code sound could be cause by the Khaleej Times app which i just happen to have installed.

I have uninstalled it just now and so far so good. What are the chances you have Khaleej Times?

[fbleichenbacher]

Hi R22

Khaleej Times is the culprit, definitely!