Volume buttons change ringtone volume when screen is off

[Michał Sawicz]

This is a rather bigger topic for user experience design, but one thing that should at least happen asap is volume buttons should be disabled when screen is off, otherwise your you-thought-silenced-phone suddenly blares a ring tone.

Steps to repro:
* suspend your phone
* press volume buttons

Expected result:
* nothing happens

Current result:
* volume changes

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: unity8 7.84+14.04.20140306-0ubuntu1
Uname: Linux 3.4.0-5-mako armv7l
ApportVersion: 2.13.3-0ubuntu1
Architecture: armhf
Date: Wed Mar 12 13:14:37 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-03-12 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu Trusty Tahr (development branch) - armhf (20140312)
SourcePackage: unity8
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SessionHandling#Sleep>: "When the screen is off, to minimize accidental volume changes, the keys should have effect only if any audio is currently playing, and they should not turn on the screen."

[Michał Sawicz (saviq)]

For the longer-term plan, I believe MeeGo solved this pretty nicely:

- when music is played, volume buttons will change that volume, when screen is off as well
- when an app producing sound is in focus (i.e. navigation), that app's volume is changed
- otherwise sound profile is changed between silent, quiet and ~three levels of ringtone volume

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

It's estimated to have a moderate impact on a large portion of Ubuntu users.

[Michał Sawicz (saviq)]

What if you're playing music? You'd need to wake/unlock the phone to change the music volume.

For sound profile / ringtone volume you'd have to unlock the phone (potentially with an elaborate password).

Please reconsider the proposal with those use cases in mind.

[Albert Astals Cid (aacid)]

unity8 waiting for design -> Incomplete

[Michał Sawicz (saviq)]

I think we should make this bug more broad, to think through the volume (buttons and indicator) behaviour for ringtone, music, alarm, apps etc.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

I'm surprised that I have to specify that volume buttons should be ignored when the device is asleep; I wouldn't have thought responding to them was even possible. But anyway, spec updated. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SessionHandling?action=diff&rev2=26&rev1=25>

Michal, your comments about what the buttons should change the volume of seem to be unrelated to the bug as reported. For example, when the phone is playing music obviously it is not suspended. Please report those separately.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

(I see now that Michal had already reported them as bug 1478075.)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

I misunderstood this bug report because it referred to the phone being "suspended". But as far as I know, the phone is never suspended. If I'm wrong, please tell me how to suspend it.

As for when the screen is off, preliminary discussion in the design team is that the volume buttons should still work when audio is playing, but not at other times.

[Pat McGowan (pat-mcgowan)]

The phone suspends when there is no activity to keep it awake. Music playback would not allow it to suspend. The volume buttons seems to be causing the phone to resume and change levels. These buttons should not be a wakeup source if that is what is happening.

[Pat McGowan (pat-mcgowan)]

For the specific description this is a low level hardware config issue it seems to me, nothing to do with unity or system settigs.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

I've moved this detail to the sound specification, since that's where the volume button behavior is defined already. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Sound?action=diff&rev2=167&rev1=166>

[Julia Palandri (julia-palandri)]

Furthermore, there's no visual feedback than the volume is being changed (since the screen is off).
With latest image on turbo (r98), with the screen off I press volume down or up. I immediately after turn the screen on and I see the notification of the volume having changed.

[John McAleely (john.mcaleely)]

I assume this behaviour may tie to the very lowest levels of the software - those keys do double duty as watchdog/reboot triggers, so even in very deep sleep, they probably do need to actually wake up the device in some cases.

Of course, either the lower levels or 'unity' should filter them in this case, and not trigger a volume change.