Wake Up Now? – Alarm Clock

Whether or not you use your iPhone as your alarm clock it may be time to start considering it.  Why?  Well, what’re the two worst parts about waking up to an alarm clock?  For me it’s the moment the alarm goes off because it scares the crap out of me , and waking up before the alarm and staring at the clock to figure out how much more time I have to sleep.  No need to worry about either of these anymore.  The new Wake Up Now? – Alarm Clock app, by Excelltech Inc., tells you what time it is and how much time you have left before your alarm goes off just by making a noise; any noise.  In addition it lets you set your alarm to your favorite iPod tunes so you can wake up feeling money and not like a shaky leaf.

Wake Up Now? – Alarm Clock is really really easy to use.  First things first, it works best on an iPhone because it requires an external mic (unless you feel like sleeping with headphones on).  To get started all you have to do is fire up the app, go to the Settings page, and choose your preference.  You can adjust the listening sensitivity so it hears you better, which if you’re trying it for the first time on a work or school night I’d recommend setting it to the most sensitive setting.   You can choose to have the app announce the time, countdown (how much time you have left to sleep), or both.  Personally I like hearing just the time because it’s short and sweet and I know when I’ve got to get up.  Announcing both is a little too long for my taste.  And finally you can choose your alarm sound.  Because I can’t stand alarms I like to mix it up with my favorite tunes, but there’s a decent selection of alarm sounds included so you can choose whatever works for you.  Once setup you can test it out from the settings page or you can scoot straight to the alarm page to set your alarm.

Setting the alarm is easy enough a monkey could do it.  It’s a scroll wheel, just spin to your chosen wake up time.  From there, make sure to plug your iPhone in so it doesn’t run out of charge in the middle of the night and whatever you do don’t manually press the sleep button.  Just let the iPhone fall asleep on it’s own.  For whatever reason pressing the sleep button causes the app not to work.

Overall I felt like Wake Up Now? – Alarm Clock is a great idea, a pretty decent app, and workes like a charm aside from a few minor caveats.   If you snore, you definitely don’t want to get this app, unless you like waking up every two seconds.  The flip side is however, if you think you don’t snore, I guess it could be a good way to find out if you do.  Additionally I found that if you get a phone call while the alarm is set it disables the app.  So if this happens you’ve got to remember to reset your alarm.  We wouldn’t have to worry about this if the iPhone could run apps in the background!  I digress.  A future update that I’d love to see is the ability to say ”Snooze” to set the app to snooze.  Pressing the snooze button isn’t bad, but since it’s a voice responsive app, let’s get the snooze in there.

Pros:

• Super easy to use & works perfect
• Can set you alarm as your favorite tunes on your iPod

Cons:

• If you make a lot of noise while sleeping then it’ll tell you the time all night
• If you receive a phone call it disables the alarm and you need to reset it

Version Reviewed: 1.01

Requirements: iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad; iPhone OS version 3.0 or later

Related Posts B

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3. Alarm Clock, Wake Me Up – Ivonna for the iPhone and iPod touch
4. Wake N Shake – The Merciless Alarm Clock for iOS
5. Proactive Sleep Alarm Clock

Posted by Ryan Johnson
on 04 2, 2010
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