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The iPhone as an alarm clock: your experiences?

mgpg89

mgpg89

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 31, 2008
970
16
Belgium
On my Macs, I've been using Awaken by Embraceware to wake up every morning. Set your playlist, set the time and have the music fade in. Simple as.

If only it were that simple on the iPhone.

I tried to use the built-in clock app, but there's no fading options and you can't use your own music either. (unless you use ringtones, but those are 30 seconds max, right?)

Then I tried AlarmTunes, P.A.C., Absalt Alarm Clock Pro, etc etc ... But the problem with these is: if you put your phone to sleep, the app isn't going to wake it up.

The third-party alarm apps are only viable options if you decide to charge your phone overnight. I only use my iPhone as an alarm clock when I'm not at home (because when home, I use my Mac) and I'm not taking my charging cable everywhere I go with me, so this is not an option for me.


Any options I'm overseeing here?
And what are your experience with using the iPhone as an alarm clock?

Is there maybe a work-around to using longer-than-30-sec 'ringtones' to use the built-in clock app ... then my problems would be solved (albeit somewhat unstylish)
 
Jailbreak and SSH into the file directory and swap one of the existing tones with a custom one. I've got my old Nokia alarm on mine as I have woken up to that for years.
 
mgpg89 said:
On my Macs, I've been using Awaken by Embraceware to wake up every morning. Set your playlist, set the time and have the music fade in. Simple as.

If only it were that simple on the iPhone.

I tried to use the built-in clock app, but there's no fading options and you can't use your own music either. (unless you use ringtones, but those are 30 seconds max, right?)

Then I tried AlarmTunes, P.A.C., Absalt Alarm Clock Pro, etc etc ... But the problem with these is: if you put your phone to sleep, the app isn't going to wake it up.

The third-party alarm apps are only viable options if you decide to charge your phone overnight. I only use my iPhone as an alarm clock when I'm not at home (because when home, I use my Mac) and I'm not taking my charging cable everywhere I go with me, so this is not an option for me.


Any options I'm overseeing here?
And what are your experience with using the iPhone as an alarm clock?

Is there maybe a work-around to using longer-than-30-sec 'ringtones' to use the built-in clock app ... then my problems would be solved (albeit somewhat unstylish)
Click to expand...

They repeat the ringtones. The alarm app works perfectly fine, just get over your irrational need for a complete song as an alarm and you'll do great. I use an overly loudly normalized recording of "Ding fries are done," the Family Guy version and this never fails to wake me up, even though it's only 30s of it :)

There is one problem with the alarm app and that's if you get a phone call during the alarm, it cancels the alarm. So, if you sleep through your phone call you're boned. Oh and also it uses the same volume setting as the ringer.
 
zacheryjensen said:
They repeat the ringtones. The alarm app works perfectly fine, just get over your irrational need for a complete song as an alarm and you'll do great. I use an overly loudly normalized recording of "Ding fries are done," the Family Guy version and this never fails to wake me up, even though it's only 30s of it :)

There is one problem with the alarm app and that's if you get a phone call during the alarm, it cancels the alarm. So, if you sleep through your phone call you're boned. Oh and also it uses the same volume setting as the ringer.
Click to expand...

There's no irrational need for a complete song.
There is a rational need to wake up to a song that fades in.
And 30s is a bit short for a proper fade-in.

As for the jailbreaking ... won't this slow down my device? (a friend of mine has a jailbroken one and he said his device slowed down terrible since he jailbroke it)
 
mgpg89 said:
There's no irrational need for a complete song.
There is a rational need to wake up to a song that fades in.
And 30s is a bit short for a proper fade-in.

As for the jailbreaking ... won't this slow down my device? (a friend of mine has a jailbroken one and he said his device slowed down terrible since he jailbroke it)
Click to expand...

Do a restore before jailbreaking.
 
ummm, how about use what's already there because it's generally only on for a few seconds anyway before it's turned off because being woken up is an unpleasant experience regardless of the music that's playing?
 
Que said:
ummm, how about use what's already there because it's generally only on for a few seconds anyway before it's turned off because being woken up is an unpleasant experience regardless of the music that's playing?
Click to expand...

Then I assume you haven't used Awaken, Aurora or Alarm Clock Pro for the Mac.

Waking up is awesome with the right song fading in.
 
for me...a 30 second alarm is pretty darn long. if you need an alarm sound longer than 30 seconds something is wrong with you.

all-in-all..the built in alarm works for me.
 
I'm using mine as an alarm clock, which I do charge every night, and it works... okay... I have an alarm app that makes you do a math problem before it will shut off, which is ideal for me because I have a hard time waking up and a hard time doing math. BUT it's useless if I hit the home button to get around the math problem and it never goes off again. I can adjust the snooze length on it but hit the home button, AGAIN, and it snoozes for ever.

The only solution is for Apple to allow backgrounding of applications and letting the users make those choices.
 
I use the native alarm clock and it wakes me up...after 30 minutes. However, I slowly finding ways to shut it off in my sleep though. I currently shy away from a 3rd party app because they don't run in the background. What if you receive an unexpected call at night and it kicks you out of the app?
 
I Been using the Alarm as my Alarm, using the Warning Alarm Tone, wakes me up fine.
 
mgpg89 said:
Then I assume you haven't used Awaken, Aurora or Alarm Clock Pro for the Mac.

Waking up is awesome with the right song fading in.
Click to expand...

ummm, no i haven't. want to know what's even more "awesome" than waking up to the right song fading in?

sleeping.
 
I use the built in alarm clock with a ringtone every morning, no complaints
 
mak10 said:
I use the built in alarm clock with a ringtone every morning, no complaints
Click to expand...

I use the iPhone alarm all the time. With a custom ringtone blaring, I get a super jolt every morning. It has never failed and setting it couldn't be easier.
 
mgpg89 said:
There's no irrational need for a complete song.
There is a rational need to wake up to a song that fades in.
And 30s is a bit short for a proper fade-in.
Click to expand...

Man, how long of a fade in do you need? :confused: I'd consider 8-10 seconds a very long fade in.

And if it's faded in at 8 seconds, that gives you 22 more seconds to wake up. If you can't wake up in 22 seconds, you should probably think about going to bed a little earlier.
 
scootaru said:
I've overslept too many times because of this.
Click to expand...

yeah i hate that....happened to me once... but i can see that this avoids the time you are in a meeting or somwhere and your alarm goes off because you forgot you set it a few days ago
 
I used a song as my custom ringtone and I also used the same song as my alarm ringtone, so after ignoring the iPhone figuring that it was just someone trying to bug me early in the morning; I switched them to have separate ringtones. I was wondering why my alarm kept malfunctioning.....:p:p:p
 
If you really need a fade in make a custom tone with garageband and build the fade in into the song. It's pretty easy
 
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