App of the Week - Review of the Alarmdroid App (15-03-2012)

[#1]

Recently we have seen an emergence of the Apps market. In the third quarter of 2011, more than 2.4 Billion Apps were downloaded. However are any of them any good?

This is your weekly guide to the innovative, creative and productive Apps on the Android Marketplace.

Alarmdroid

Category: Tools

Price: Free

Size: 1.4mb

A phone without a alarm clock? Certainly very rare these days. The Android Marketplace is also flooded with all these alarm clocks which have small differences between each other. However, if you want a sophisticated alarm system which allows you to customise features fully to your preference, then this may be for you.

To start with, it allows you to have more than one alarm. In fact I struggled to find its limit. It also allows you to customise each alarm and give them their own individual properties. Rather than just selecting the vibration and volume levels. You can choose the Alarm to be a ringtone from your phones music library. If you have data to spare, you can select an internet radio station to wake you up. Others may prefer it to tell them the time and weather when it rings.

The App's snooze function - the feature which stops the alarm and resets it for a short time later - is much more impressive. We have times when we want to stay in bed for a little longer. Sometimes what’s more annoying than the alarm ringing is putting it on snooze. The “flip 'n' snooze” feature allows you to snooze the alarm by simply turning the phone over or shaking it. Although it can sometimes take some time to react, it is much more convenient than trying to press the correct button..

If you really struggle to get out of bed in the morning. You can set yourself an arithmetic or a mathematical challenge. In this way until the challenge is not completed the alarm will not go off. It may make sure you wake up in time but I would not recommend it, especially on a cold frosty morning.

Overall the App is quiet good. It certainly does what the manufacturers claims. It may be a little confusing when you first get onto it. But after playing around with it for a while you will easily pick it up. Certainly if your phone's alarm is not very good, its worth downloading. Otherwise I still recommend you to give it a go. As there might be a feature which you end up liking. Making it much worthwhile downloading. I would reward this App 6 out of 10.  

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[#2]

Thanks, a very useful app.

[#3]

Just installed this (it is the one by Fabian Lueghausen).

It has many more features than the stock Sense alarm. You can set it to snooze when you flip your phone over, you can set the alarm to gradually increase in volume over a time period set by you, You can also set countdown alarms for 'Power Napping', you can set snooze time, alarm ring time before switching to snooze, you can even have a speaking clock that can be set to any interval from every minute, to every 60 minutes.

Overall, I'm impressed!

[#4]

Well, I have HTC Sense/Android and the phone does turn itself on, but this may be affected by the fact that it is invariably on charge at the time. It is very loud, you have to get up to avoid waking the whole household!

[#5]

Yes, some of the newer HTC phones will wake for an alarm. I have an HTC Desire which doesn't wake, and an HTC Wilfire S (my work supplied phone) that will wake for alarms. The Wildfire awakes because it has a 'Fast Boot' option that is selected by default. This basically puts the phone in to a 'hibernate' type mode rather than turning it off completly. Personally, I found this annoying, as when I was off shift, I was turning the phone off (but really turning it to 'hibernate' for 4 days), then I would find the phone needed charging once i turned it back on again.

Far better to turn off 'Fast boot' ('Menu', 'Settings', 'Power', untick 'Fastboot'), and use the 'Hibernate' app if and when you need it, then when you turn it off, it is actually 'Off'!   But that may not suit everybody obviously....... :-)