Review: Sleep Cycle Watches You Sleep, Wakes You Up Gently

Giles Turnbull ()

20100114-sleepcycle.jpg

Ever have that feeling that you’ve had a rotten night’s sleep, and the last thing you want to do is get up out of bed?

Yeah, me too.

Sleep Cycle is an iPhone app that says it might be able to help.

It calls itself a “bio-alarm clock”, and the thinking behind it is quite clever. The app makes use of your iPhone’s accelerometer to monitor your movements during the night. It builds up a profile of your sleep patterns and then tries to wake you at the best possible moment, during your “light” sleep phase.

The theory is that this way, you wake up feeling more refreshed and better able to get on with the day.

When I tried it I wasn’t feeling particularly tired or sleep deprived. In fact, it seemed like I was subconsciously aware that my iPhone was perched a few inches from my head, so I found myself trying not to move around too much in case I knock it out of the bed.

The disadvantage of Sleep Cycle is that you have to leave it running all night, perched on the edge of your mattress. And that also means leaving your iPhone plugged into a mains power supply. The app’s notes say it puts your device into a low power mode, but even so: your phone is switched on all night.

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If you’re bothered about the phone ringing during the night, you can put switch it to Airplane mode so that it won’t connect to any cell or wifi networks. But you can’t mute the sound, because – duh – you need that for the alarm that wakes you in the morning.

The app is certainly well made and provides very clear instructions for use. It’s also very popular and getting a lot of positive reviews on the App Store.

Personally, I’m not convinced it can help me; but if you’re the kind of person who simply doesn’t do mornings, it might be worth trying out. At 99 cents, you can’t go far wrong.

14 comments »

About the author

gilest

Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. He has a website you can ignore and a Twitter account you needn't follow.

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Posted in iPhone, iPhone Apps, Reviews, Software, Top stories |

  • Ragna

    Sounds like a cheap Sleeptracker ( http://www.sleeptracker.com/ ). I have one and find it awesome, so I think I”ll try this. :)

  • Herman

    There’s a tonload of these in the appstore… why highlight this one?

  • http://gilest.org Giles Turnbull

    @Herman: I wrote about this because it was the first of its kind that I’d encountered, and the first that I tried out for myself. If you’ve seen something similar that you think deserves some attention, by all means add a link to it here in the comments :)

  • http://www.szilveszter.ca WS

    There are 4 stages of sleep and then REM (rapid eye movement). REM is where they believe you consolidate memories. Experiments that prevented participants from achieving REM showed a marked reduction in test performance when compared to those that were allowed to sleep through the night.

    This was obviously done with electrodes, not body movement or other speculative measures.

    Waking up after REM is ideal because you are at the lightest stage of sleep. Waking up during REM or at a later stage (4) leaves you groggy and disorientated. Typically a normal sleep cycle is 1:5 h. So if you want a totally ballpark estimate on when you get up from your nap, set your alarm to 1:30 or you will most likely wake up feeling like crap.

    If you want a good nights sleep, it’s better to go to sleep earlier. People tend to sleep more and better the earlier they go to bed. If you go to bed at 3am, even if you get 8 hours, isn’t the same as if you got those same hours when you hit the hay at 11pm.

    There is so much more to sleep patterns and the brain that people are aware of. The “8 hour” rule is also an over simplification. People need varying amounts, some 9, some 6. You should know your body.

    These apps are for entertainment. Anyone seriously thinking they are going to do anything, other than inconvenience you, is just out to lunch. And I’ll take an egg sandwich, please.

  • Jon

    Minor point, but Airplane Mode only turns off cell connections, not WiFi; you’d have to turn that off separately.

  • Andrew

    No, @Jon.
    Switching on Airplane Mode turns off all radio connections, including WiFi; you do not have to turn off WiFi separately. It is simply an option to turn WiFi back on while in Airplane Mode.

  • http://gilest.org Giles Turnbull

    @Jon: Andrew’s right. On my iPhone, activating Airplane mode switches off everything, but I can then re-activate wifi alone if needed.

  • Joe

    Why does this app NOT support the iPod Touch???

  • Jon

    @Andrew & Giles,
    Huh. Didn’t know that. I’ve only used WiFi on airplanes twice (during VA’s recent free promotion) and don’t remember having to turn it back on after switching into Airplane Mode. Makes sense though. Thanks!

  • http://williesite.tk Willie

    yea why no ipod touch?

  • Majkel

    I’ve used this app all week now (5 days) and even though it says it requires 2 days to calibrate, it has without a fault woken me up about 20 minutes after my lightest peak when I’m well on my way into deep sleep (about 2/3 down the scale).

    I guess the app’s theory is sound, because I’ve been absolutely exhausted every morning I’ve woken up this week (~8 hrs sleep).

  • Seth

    @WS thanks for sharing:)

  • Katie

    I bought this app and put it on my touch and it works fine. The only reason they say it isn’t supported is because it doesn’t have the ability to tun off the screen. At least, that’s what I read from another review.

    When I wake up in the morning, I feel great. I’m just not sure if that’s due to it actually finding the best time to wake me up or if it’s the gradual, gentle alarm it has. The only problem I have with it is that the statistics never say that I go below the “awake” stage. It’s just a very jagged line at about the same level. I’m not sure if that’s true or if it’s overly sensitive. I would go with the latter because when I put it on the test mode, it seems to pick up my heart beat. I can be lying perfectly still and it registers movement. It always shows an increase towards the awake side right before it wakes me though. I don’t really know, but I do like it.

  • Bo

    Messes up fyour battery..? I believe ai!