We don't know how much of this is snake oil, but an iPhone app claims it can tell when you're in your lightest sleep phase and slowly rouse you from your zzzzs rather than jolting you awake with a loud buzzer.
The Sleep Cycle alarm clock, which will cost you 99 cents at the iTunes App Store, requires that you sleep with your iPhone face down on your mattress -- somehow it's supposed to stay on your mattress throughout the evenings tosses and turns. Thirty minutes before the designated wake-up time, the app analyzes your movements to figure out where you are in your sleep cycle and chooses the best alarm to wake you up with. The latest version of the app also gives you detailed graphs of your nightly sleep patterns. For now the app only works with iPhones, not iPod Touches.
via cnet
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Comments (9)
I've been using this a little over a week, I really like it. The alarm could be louder, but it's a much nicer way to wake up.
I've used this app since December and while I think the "sleep cycle" calculation is a bit of snake oil, the alarm is very pleasant and the sleep statistics give you a good idea of how you slept, even if they aren't perfectly accurate.
I've used this app for a month, I like the way it wake me up. It's nice to know my sleep routine too.
We've been using this app in our house too for the last month. It's helped us learn that I get my best sleep in the few hours of the morning before I wake up and my boyfriend gets his right after he hits the pillow.
Thanks to this app, I now go to bed before him, ensuring that I get the right amount of Zzzs I need and that getting me out of bed in the morning no longer results in extended resentment.
i'd taken 'snake oil' with a grain of salt. it's pretty up front about what it does. it uses the accelerometer to measure movements. presumably, a certain level of movement guesses that you're dreaming versus awake and tossing and turning. obviously no substitute for a proper sleep study. but i like the trending aspect a lot.
I've been using Easy WakeUp, which is very similar but you can also record your own (motivational) alarm message.
I'm curious as to why it doesn't work on the iPod Touch?
It might not work with the iPod Touch because they haven't calibrated it to work with the slightly different iPod Touch accelerator (give that the iPod Touch is thinner).
I used to have this on my iPod Touch, but that was one generation ago. It seemed to work fine, but maybe it actually wasn't accurate at all! I also didn't really love that the time it would wake me up was variable, because if I wasn't sleeping well, it would register that and wake me up earlier, when I really wanted to stay in bed for awhile. I also have a system in the morning and it was weird getting to work at different times depending on when my iPod woke me up.