Gadget Girl Tips

In a perfect world, I would wake slowly from my deep slumber to the birds singing a morning melody and to the smell of coffee dancing the air. Although my reality is more like, the cat stretched across my body like I’m her own personal pillow, the dog is snoring, and then POW! A nuclear siren of an alarm goes off, I jump; the cat falls onto the dog, the dog jumps off the bed and is now in attack mode barking at the alarm (aka my iPhone).

Oh, I am so glad to see you 4 A.M., Saturday morning.

Since I’m not a fan of having a repeat performance of this morning, I go off in search of a new alarm app for my iPhone.

Although, the iPhone is n impressive phone it lacks the capability to run third party applications such as an alarm in the background like the Android operating system. In order for the alarm to work on an iPhone, the alarm app must be actively running, which is ok unless until you fall asleep reading an e-book and forget to start the alarm app. I would fall asleep with my Android without having the paranoid feeling that I was going to wake up late the next morning.

So here’s my pick alarm pick for Iphone and Android.  Click the app name for a direct link to the apple store or Android Market.

Nightstand Central (iPhone, iPhone, iTouch)
Free

With music alarms, a built-in sleep timer, weather, customizable photo backgrounds, and even an included shake-on/shake-off flashlight, Nightstand Central turns your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad into the ultimate bedside hub. I favorite feature is the fade in music. Now I awake to church bells that slowly bring me out of my slumber.

Alarm Clock Plus (Andoird)
Feee with Ads or 99 cents without ads

Alarm Clock Plus combines built-in reliability with a slick, customizable interface. Personalize your alarm sounds using ringtones, songs, playlists, and even apps like Pandora. Enable the math setting and you will have to solve a math problem to turn off the alarm. With features like snooze duration, alarm fade-in and vibration delay, the customization options are virtually limitless. I used this app when I had an Android phone.