How to Fix Notification Vibration for the Droid X

A few months back, my niece mentioned that her Droid X wasn't vibrating when she received a new text message. Whether the volume on the phone was on or off, the phone just wouldn't vibrate.

I looked it over, but I was a bit puzzled. I fiddled with some settings, and nothing seemed to help. I eventually turned to the Internet, and I found a flurry of suggestions: some useful and some not. Here's what worked for me.

The Symptoms

First, let me describe the symptoms a bit more, so that you know we're talking about the same issue.

When the phone rings for a phone call, her phone vibrated fine. When I typed on the keyboard, it vibrated fine. There was no problem with the actual vibration mechanism in the phone. There just seemed to be a software bug somewhere preventing the phone from vibrating when she received a text message.

Solutions That Didn't work

Check your settings. Some people suggested you check the settings in your SMS app or in the main Android menu. Within GoSMS (and the stock SMS app), you can click on and off the vibrate option. It was clicked on, and I checked several times to no avail.

Battery pull. This often helps fix little software bugs. I tried a battery pull a couple times, but it definitely didn't help.

Factory data reset. In the privacy section of the menu, you can do a factory data reset. This wipes all user data off the phone and more or less starts from scratch. This was supposed to remove any bugs that prevented the phone from vibrating. It didn't. Instead, it just created a headache for me as I had to then restore all the backups I created (apps, SMS messages, contacts, etc).

The Solution

Finally, after many hours of fiddling, I came across a solution that worked: Sound Manager.

This is a free app available in the Android market, and it allows you to change certain sound settings on the phone. If you open Sound Manager and press the menu button, there is an option titled "Vibrate Settings." In this menu, there is a setting for Notifications, and the setting must be set to "Vibrate Whenever Posible" or "Vibrate Only When Silent." Somehow, her phone had been set to "Don't Vibrate."

Why? I have no idea. I'm guessing that she installed an app that tinkered with this internal setting. Without a standard menu option in the Android menu to fix it, I didn't know anything was wrong. However, once I installed Sound Manager and ticked that option, the phone worked like new.

So, if your Droid X (or other Android phone) stops vibrating on notifications, get Sound Manager. It's the only solution that worked for us.