Having Trouble Getting a Good Night's Sleep? There's an App for That.

in Uncategorized
October 29th, 2010

Maciek Drejak Labs released an app earlier this year for the iPhone (which can also be used on the iPod Touch) called “Sleep Cycle.” Recently, Lifehacker rated this App the best alarm clock application function for smart phones for its weekly Hive Five feature.

The way this application works is by monitoring your body movements during sleep. The user is instructed to place the phone face side down between the fitted sheet and the mattress. Over the course of the night, the program registers high amounts activity (movement) as “awake,” moderate activity as “Dreaming” (REM sleep), and little to no activity as “Deep Sleep” (slow wave sleep). For the first two or three nights of use, Sleep Cycle familiarizes itself with the user’s movement patterns by creating a graph of the user’s sleep cycle.

Sample graph of a user's sleep cycle

At the peaks of the graph, the user is most likely at his or her lightest sleep. The user sets an alarm for what time he or she would like to wake up. Within the last thirty minutes of a night’s sleep, Sleep Cycle will analyze the peaks of the graph and will attempt to wake the user gently when he or she is exhibiting a peak of high activity (ie: experiencing light sleep).

Customer reviews express some mixed results with this application, but overall, it appears that many people have positive experiences with Sleep Cycle. Some users report that when the application works properly, they feel wonderful when they wake up rather than being ripped out of deep sleep or a dream when the alarm goes off.

Although this application is only useful for iPhone and iPod Touch users, it is fairly inexpensive at 0.99 cents, and it has the potential to help extremely deep sleepers.

Sleep Cycle – Maciek Drejak Labs
Best Mobile Alarm App: Sleep Cycle – Lifehacker