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Yes, I was so happily surprised to find that my Sony Ericsson T610 would switch on, so I would never miss an alarm. Those were the days. Trillion dollar Apple can't do what Sony did back in the day. ;)
I had the Sony as well, it wasn’t really off. Just think about it, if it was truly off it wouldn’t know when to switch on. It was a simulation but kept power on it.
 
I had the Sony as well, it wasn’t really off. Just think about it, if it was truly off it wouldn’t know when to switch on. It was a simulation but kept power on it.

If I remember correctly it was in fact off. There was a separate timer circuit that would turn it on when an alarm was due. I'm not sure if it was fully turned on or if it just booted to a simple alarm software but I remember at least one of my Sony Ericsson phones asking if I wanted to turn it on after dismissing the alarm, and if I selected yes it would go through the normal boot process. I'm pretty sure my Nokia 3310 was also really turned off with an alarm pending. Not sure all phones did this, but multiple Sony Ericsson phones did for sure.
 
Some android phones can do that.
My Xiaomi redmi 4 pro does, you can even set a time of the day when it shuts down itself automatically, and a time when it turns on automatically as well.
I was surprised at first because we are all acquainted with phones that cannot do that, whereas some can, as it turns out.

This is to say that any other smartphone could theoretically do that, who knows why they don't implement such a useful feature anymore...
 
If I remember correctly it was in fact off. There was a separate timer circuit that would turn it on when an alarm was due. I'm not sure if it was fully turned on or if it just booted to a simple alarm software but I remember at least one of my Sony Ericsson phones asking if I wanted to turn it on after dismissing the alarm, and if I selected yes it would go through the normal boot process. I'm pretty sure my Nokia 3310 was also really turned off with an alarm pending. Not sure all phones did this, but multiple Sony Ericsson phones did for sure.
So the device isn't fully turned off :) I've highlighted it in bold for you. Sure the antenna's are disabled, as is the modem etc but the device itself can't be fully powered off.
 
So the device isn't fully turned off :) I've highlighted it in bold for you. Sure the antenna's are disabled, as is the modem etc but the device itself can't be fully powered off.

Well, the OS would be turned off and everything but timekeeping circuitry will be powered off. Every single device that keeps time will have some circuitry running at all times including iPhones. If they can monitor a set alarm and wake the device differs. It then becomes a question about how "turned off" is defined.

If we go by the definition that no circuitry is active then a smartphone is never turned off unless the battery is disconnected. The same thing is true for feature phones, laptops and even desktop computers which do have a clock battery. I define turned off as a state where the software isn't running and nothing is powered except timekeeping hardware.

The timekeeping circuitry would be completely independent on a feature phone only that it can trigger the device to power on to handle an alarm event.

But I get your point
 
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