App Review: Sleep Cycle alarm clock By Maciek Drejak Labs

I have spent 10 nights with the Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock. I am pretty impressed by this app. I believe that the alarm function of this app is really not the most important part of the app. It is really the analysis of your sleep patterns that makes this app invaluable to me. The idea behind the app is that our bodies go through different stages of sleep from deep sleep to light sleep. This app wakes you up when you are "dreaming." Which, is supposed to be an easier way to wake up.

Setup: The app uses the accelerometer or gyroscope to detect your movement. So, you are going to have to put the phone on top of your mattress and under the fitted sheet. Also, you will want to keep your iPhone plugged in so that it does not die because if it does the alarm will not go off, obviously. It is actually kinda funny that I had an old LG flip phone that you could turn off and the alarm would still go off and it had 3g before the iPhone... but I digress. The idea of putting your phone under a fitted sheet while charging and sleeping near it may turn some people off. I usually sleep with my phone somewhere near me but not quite this close. However, there was no problem. You may want to talk to an oncologist about this. 

Validity: The validity of this app must be called into question. The question is about how accurate the app can measure atonia. Atonia is the state of paralysis that the body goes through during deep sleep. I am not sure that the accelerometer and gyroscope are sensitive enough to measure this properly. They may be but I have also read sleep doctors that say sleep is not necessarily tied to the amount you move in a night. 

Should You Get It? So the validity of the actual graphs of your sleep maybe somewhat diminished. Surely though this app will wake me up at a good time to wake up though... Right? Well, chances are you are already waking up in the sleep phase that the alarm would go off in. The deal is as we age we do a lot more light/dreaming sleep instead of deep sleep and as the night goes on the amount of time we spend in deep sleep each sleep cycle get progressively smaller until you are barely going in to deep sleep. So if you are getting enough sleep during the night then you are probably already getting up when this alarm would wake you up. That was my experience. I was already awake laying there waiting for my alarm to go off.

My graphs showed basically two different kind of nights. The graphs claimed that some nights I got barely any sleep and other nights it seemed to be like it should. 

A Good Night

A Bad Night

Overall, the developer did a good job on the app with what he had to work with. The app may be somewhat good for measuring the amount of movement you make in bed. The app makes judgments based on those movements. If those are valid or not I can't really say. 

3/5 Stars = Maybe You Should Consider IT.
The app only costs 99 cents
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sleep-cycle-alarm-clock/id320606217?mt=8