Apple picker A lot of people have trouble getting up early every day. But you know it yourself - it's 6 o'clock in the morning and your alarm clock is ringing mercilessly and your head is pounding and you wouldn't even survive the day without coffee. Help from this seemingly hopeless situation is promised by popular applications Sleep Cycle and its competitor Sleep time. Both apps have a lot to offer, but which one will really help you?
Quality sleep is an important part of our life. During it we relax and rest. Sleep is cyclical, with REM and NREM phases alternating. During REM (rapid eye movement) sleep is light and we wake up the easiest. The applications reviewed below try to use this knowledge and wake you up as gently as possible.
Sleep Cycle
I hardly need to introduce this very well-known and popular helper for monitoring sleep and waking. It has been in the App Store for several years and has become popular among people. With the new design, its popularity has increased even more.
Just set the time you want to be woken up, the phase in which you want to be woken up, and Sleep Cycle should automatically recognize when you are the lightest sleeper and turn on the alarm. How well it works in practice is another matter. You can choose a variety of wake-up tones - either pre-installed or your own music, which may be an advantage for some, but be careful with your song selection so you don't startle yourself and fall out of bed in the morning.
When Sleep Cycle wakes you up in the morning, but you don't feel like getting up yet, just shake your iPhone and the alarm will snooze for a few minutes. You can do this to him several times, then the vibrations will also be added, which you can't easily turn off, which will force you to stand up.
Sleep Cycle offers clear graphs in which you will discover the quality of your sleep, the quality of sleep by individual days of the week, the time you went to bed and the time spent in bed. You can have all of this displayed for the last 10 days, 3 months, or the entire time you've been using the app.
In addition to graphs, the statistics also include information about the shortest and longest night and the worst and best night. There is no lack of information on the number of nights, average sleep time or total time spent in bed. For individual nights, you will then see the quality of your sleep, from when to when you were in bed and the time spent in it.
However, Sleep Cycle does not only help when waking up, but also when falling asleep - let the soothing sounds of ocean waves, birdsong or any other sound play and immerse yourself in the world of dreams. You don't have to worry about the birds singing in your ear all night, Sleep Cycle turns off playback as soon as you fall asleep.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/sleep-cycle-alarm-clock/id320606217?mt=8″]
Sleep time
This app is younger than Sleep Cycle and also less well-known, but in many ways it is more interesting. In my opinion, Sleep Time is much better in design. Sleep Cycle basically consists of three colors (blue, black, gray), which does not look pretty or stylish at all.
The working principle of Sleep Time is basically the same as with Sleep Cycle – you set the wake-up time, phase, alarm tone (even your own)... Here, too, I would give a plus point for the fact that Sleep Time shows how long it will take you to get up after setting the alarm. So if you want to sleep for a certain time, you can adjust the alarm settings accordingly.
Of course, Sleep Time can also snooze the alarm, just turn the display upwards. But you have to pay attention to how many times you have already snoozed the alarm. Sleep Time does not activate any vibrations when your desired wake-up time has already arrived, so you can fall asleep for even half an hour.
When it comes to sleep stats, Sleep Time does very well. It also uses graphs, but columnar and colored, thanks to which you can, for example, compare the stages of sleep that prevailed for you on individual days. You can also choose in more detail which time period you will monitor in the statistics. For each night, there is a clear colored graph with individual phases of sleep and detailed time percentage data on the entire sleep. In addition, you can use another application to measure your heart rate every time you wake up. This will then be displayed in the Sleep Time statistics, so the application is ahead in this direction as well.
Just like Sleep Cycle, Sleep Time will also help you fall asleep, but the playing sounds will not turn off automatically, but after a certain time that you set yourself. So Sleep Cycle has the upper hand in this case.
Gallery
I tried both apps myself for several months. Although they are supposed to help, none of them have convinced me that my awakening has improved. Although I tried to set the half-hour phase of the alarm clock, it was no glory. The only benefit I personally see is that you won't be so startled when one of the apps' alarm clock starts ringing, because the tunes gradually get louder.
So I can't unequivocally say which application is better even based on the knowledge of people around me who use this or that application, the important thing is that they are satisfied. You can tell us about your experience with these applications in the comments below the article.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/sleep-time+-alarm-clock-sleep/id498360026?mt=8″]
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/sleep-time-alarm-clock-sleep/id555564825?mt=8″]
I once tried the sleep cycle application with a half-hour wake-up interval. I can't say that it wouldn't be known. in the morning I woke up "fresher" maybe a placebo effect. but it has two crucial hooks for me :-) it follows two people, it disrupts the ritual of waking up the other half and the fact that even after years it does not have iOS modes. I press it once and everything turns off, adjusts the brightness, etc... 2 times a day adjust wi-fi, brightness... and have the iphone on the charger all night every day...ee
I have been using no sleep cycle for over a year. It is an excellent application if, for example, you have sleep disorders and you are solving it and trying to do something about it, so here you have objective data in graphs. I don't have the slightest problem with anything. I don't mind the cable at all, I have it plugged into the conference dock. table. I always put airplane mode on at night. The wife next to me has no idea about my awakening. I have only had positive experiences
I use Sleep Cycle. The tone of the alarm clock is pleasant, I have the feeling that I'm less tired when I get up, but I don't know if it's a placebo :) I turn on Airplane at night so that I don't accidentally get disturbed by something (a message from FB, ...) and I don't think it's good to have it next to my head mobile connected to the network.
Rather, I think that when a person has a problem falling asleep or falling asleep, the problem is somewhere else than in the alarm clock/telephone/light/darkness/case etc.... You should rather think about your lifestyle and priorities ;o)
I tested such an application a long time ago with considerable mistrust in its functionality. So I put the iPhone on a solid windowsill where the iPhone can't detect any vibrations and yet in the morning I saw the progress of "my sleep" in the app, which the app clearly made up. So, I guess.
maybe your application detected an earthquake :D
I have been using the application since January and I can say that it is much better than the classic iPhone alarm clock. Since I am dealing with a problem with sleep, I was wondering what the course of my sleep at night is, and the result is that if I wake up at a certain time during the night and cannot fall asleep again, the application records it, so I think that the course of the sinusoid is true. The application could still scan the sound, I think the measurement would be more accurate
It bothers me that the iPhone has to be connected to the network (cable), it's quite inconvenient and once it even happened to me that the power connector somehow got stuck or something and I had to deal with the repair..
But it probably won't be very healthy to fall asleep with a mobile phone next to your head, while it's still in charging mode. I wonder if that might have any effect.
if you don't have an original charger but a cheap ordinary one (up to 500), it often happens that the chargers whistle somewhere around 8-12kHz and that's not good at all, you might get a headache or a migraine, but with original or more expensive ones there is no problem and what i don't use it at all anymore, i use it almost every day on my iphone 5g and ipod 4g, and i'm very satisfied
It would take a review of all sleep apps and in this last one explain the difference between the paid and free versions.
They help me, but I feel a greater loss of energy on 3Gs.