If you spend a lot of time on the road for work, like I do, then you know how important it is to have a reliable way to wake up in the morning. Whether it is a wake-up call, a hotel alarm clock, or something you bring yourself, it is critical that it goes off on time and gets you out of the bed. I have had enough misses with wake-up calls and clocks in rooms that I always use my cell phone to wake me up in the morning. Thankfully, this arrangement has been pretty effective, especially since I started using the iPhone four years ago.
Even though the iPhone’s built-in alarm clock is rock solid, it has the same weakness that most alarm clocks are saddled with- the snooze button. It’s great to be able to grab that extra five to ten minutes of sleep when you can afford it, but unfortunately, this can get you into trouble if you aren’t careful. If you are really tired and lose track of how many times that you snooze the alarm, you can end up very late, very fast. I’m natually a night owl, so I tend to catch up on leftover work late at night, as well as doing prep for the next day, so I have definitely fallen prey to the overly used snooze button before. This became enough of a problem that I eventually moved my home alarm clock several feet away from the bed so I would have to physically get up and out of the bed to shut it off. This, however, didn’t sit so well with my wife. She wakes very easily doesn’t have to get up as early as me, so more often than not, a couple of good shoves from her woke me up before the actual alarm. Needless to say, the clock is by my bed again.
The biggest problem I seem to have when I am really tired, however, is with turning the alarm completely off, but then falling back to sleep without getting out of the bed. This only tends to occur when I am really worn out, but that can happen when you are working out of a hotel room and are under a deadline. Unfortunately, there is no good way around this with the iPhone’s built-in clock, and when it happens, there is no telling when you might actually get up. Fortunately, this has only happened to me on a few occasions, and never when it was ultra-critical that I be at the job site at an early hour. It still isn’t any fun to try and explain, though.
Thanks to my past experiences, I was quite intrigued when I heard about wake N shake- The Aggressive Alarm Clock from developer Andres Canella. It seemed like the perfect app to make absolutely certain that I get myself up in the morning while on the road. I had the opportunity to try it out for the last two weeks, while the app was still in beta, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. The app works exactly as advertised, and is definitely aggressive.
The first thing you need to know about wake N shake is that there is no snooze. None. Nada. So, if you can’t live without those five minute bursts of extra sleep before you finally get up, then you might want to look elsewhere. Second, and this is where the real aggressiveness comes in, to get the alarm to shut off, you have to shake your iPhone. And shake it. And then shake it some more. wake N shake is not an alarm clock for the faint of heart, but if you are someone like me, that could be exactly what you need.
So let’s take a look under wake N shake’s hood. The Settings tab contains a few options that pertain to all of the features in the app.
First off, you can select the Default Alarm for the app from any of 24 preset alarm sounds. You can also select the Shuffle option, which allows wake N shake to randomly select your alarm sound for you.
Second, you have the option to make wake N shake a little less extreme with a Volume Fade-In for your alarm, giving you a little mercy when the alarm starts to sound. You can also have the option to enable the iPhone’s Vibrate option to add a little extra oomph to your alarms if you choose.
The Countdown setting controls what you see under the animated clock on the wake N shake’s main screen. If Countdown is turned on, then if you have an active alarm, you will see a hours, minutes, and seconds countdown until the alarm goes off.
If there is no active alarm, no numbers appear below the clock.
If Countdown is turned off, then the current time shows up below the animated clock icon.
wake N shake’s main screen is simplicity itself, and has a unique look compared to most iOS apps. You simply have a red animated alarm cock in the center of the screen, and depending on how you set the Countdown option on the Settings tab, either nothing at all, a countdown timer, or the current time below it. The developer states that the red led-style text on a black background was chosen to be easy on sleepy, dilated in the dark. I would agree that the app works well in this respect. I tend to get up early, and I keep the shades drawn in my hotel room, so it is typically very dark in there when I get up. Nobody wants to be blinded by a bright white screen when they first get up, so thanks to these color choices, wake N shake is not a problem in this department. Also, even though it is easy on the eyes, the red does a good job of projecting the aggressive image that the developer is going for, as well.
As far as iOS apps go, wake N shake has a very minimalist design, so it is pretty easy to get around and operate. Tapping on the “+” icon in the bottom right corner of the screen takes you to the Alarms screen.
From here, you can see any alarms that you have set, exactly when they are set for, and whether they are active or not. You can also edit any existing alarm, or turn it on or off.
The animated alarm clock on the app’s main screen is smiling and very friendly, but the icon to add new alarms, which is located in the upper right-hand corner, isn’t so nice. Tapping this much angrier alarm clock icon takes you to the setup screen for new alarms, which is very clear and concise.
First, you can choose the days you want the alarm to repeat on. If this is left unaltered, the alarm will automatically deactivate after one event.
Second, you can choose from the already mentioned list of 24 different alarms sounds. They run the gamut from loud and obnoxious, to funny, to more subtle. My personal favs are “Hello, Robot,” which is a humorous female robot voice asking you for some French Toast, and “Sir, Yes Sir”, which is a military-style trumpet reveille. Well, I actually can’t say that I like Yes Sir, because it is really just evil and loud at 6 AM or earlier, but it is very effective at getting me out of the bed when I am really sleepy.
Also of note when choosing alarm sounds is that, if shuffle is selected for the Default Alarm in the Settings, then the alarm sound of your new alarm will not be editable.
As you can see here, the field is greyed out, and the word “SHUFFLE” appears in the alarm sound field.
One very subtle, but nice design choice here is the ability to toggle the alarm sound demos on or off. When the text of the alarm sounds is red, the clips will be played as you cycle through them. Tapping on the name changes it to white, and silences the demos. This allows you to select a new sound quietly, like for instance, when you are getting into bed next to your already sleeping wife. You don’t want to make a wrong move in that situation. Been there. Don’t want to go back.
Next up is the setting for Shake Intensity, which is the feature that really defines wake N shake. The meter slides from left to right and the choices go from hard to painful to merciless. I can’t say that I disagree with them, either. More on this in a moment.
To close out alarm creation, you have the standard iOS rolling time selector that we all know and love for setting your alarm time. As I said before, setting up alarms in wake N shake is a snap, and the developer did a really nice job keeping it slick and simple. Who wants an overcomplicated alarm clock, right?
The last main feature of wake N shake has actually become my favorite as I have used it. It’s called Quick Nap.
As you can see above, this screen presents you with six different timers, ranging from 10 minutes to 1 hour, as well as a fully adjustable Custom option. If you are tired and are ready to take a nap, there is no fooling around, setup, or thinking required. Just select a time and sack out. The app uses the default alarm sound, and wakes you promptly as you selected. I have used this feature for short naps three of the last four days, and it is just so handy. On more than one occasion, I have messed up the AM/PM on a nap alarm using the iPhone’s built-in alarm clock and overslept. With wake N shake’s Quick Nap, that is never an concern.
A well designed alarm clock isn’t much good if it doesn’t work properly. Fortunately, wake N shake delivers the goods. Aggressively.
As you can see from the screenshot, when your alarm goes off, you are presented with a meter bar on the screen. This is where the shaking comes in. You have to shake the phone long enough to fill up the meter, which depends on how you set the Shake Intensity slider for that particular alarm. From what I could gather, the Hard slider setting requires 10 seconds of constant shaking to fill the meter, the painful setting takes 15 seconds, and the merciless takes a full 20 seconds. Ouch. I personally use the Hard setting, and it is plenty to wake me up, but if you need, or God forbid, want more, the option is there for you.
There is one exception to be aware of in regards to wake N shake’s alarming. Everything works just as I described above if you have the app open when the alarm goes off. If the app is in the foreground when you put your iPhone in sleep mode, then you will hear your chosen alarm, with the following iOS notification.
Just unlock your iPhone normally with the slider, and off you go to shaking.
Because of the way iOS works, wake N shake reacts a bit differently if you have it in the background, or completely closed.
In this case, you get an iOS notification, but this alert is always accompanied by the same “Bunga Bunga” alarm sound. I asked the developer about this, and he said that it works this way because Apple requires a different music file format for notification sounds, and that these files have much less compression than the standard alarm sounds, which are just MP3 files. To keep the size of the app reasonable, he decided to pick a single sound for iOS notifications. The “Bunga Bunga” sound, which is a bongo drum pattern, is a good choice, as it is sort of a middle ground among the 24 sound options.
As with any iOS notification, you have the option to Close it if you choose. If you do, fortunately the app will keep resending the notification to you until you choose SHAKE!! and clear the alarm by filling the meter. This sort of acts as a snooze, but you don’t get very long in between reminders. The intention is that you will choose SHAKE!! the first time and go ahead and clear the alarm, but the Close option has to be there because it is an iOS notification.
wake N shake does have a notification issue to be aware of, due to the way iOS is designed. It is critical that you don’t ever turn notifications for wake N shake off in the iOS Notification Center. I made this mistake during testing, and forgot to turn them back on. The next time I used the app for an alarm, I didn’t get one until I woke up over an hour late and opened the app. Just to be clear, this wasn’t the fault of the developer, as the app automatically turns on notifications during install. It was because I changed the settings. Like any app that relies on notifications during times that they aren’t opened in the foreground, wake N shake has to have them turned on to be a fully functional alarm clock.
I have to give Mr Canella plenty of credit, as he has been very proactive with updates and bug fixes, going back to the beta stage of wake N shake. Just today, he notified me that version 1.1 of the app is already on the way. It seems you could bypass the alarms by hitting the home button, or could lower the volume using the – button on the side of the iPhone. Now, the volume buttons are locked out, and you can’t simply escape with the home button. If you set the alarm, you have to bite the bullet and shake your iPhone. If you are spending money on an aggressive alarm clock, what’s the point in being able to cheat, right? Still, it’s good to see him reacting to potential issues. Considering that I have turned alarm clocks off in my sleep before, I don’t need any wiggle room to get out of my morning wake up.
This review is focused on wake N shake- The Merciless Alarm Clock Pro Shaker Edition, which costs a very reasonable $0.99. There is also a free version of the app available in the App Store. The free version has 14 alarm sounds, rather than 24, and doesn’t include the vibrate and volume fade-in features from the paid version. It also doesn’t have the 20 second merciless shake setting and it includes ads. While it is missing a few key features, it does give users a great way to try the app before they buy. Considering it is only $0.99, I would definitely recommend the paid version if this is an app you will use often.
As with any app, there are always additions that can make the experience a little better. Personally, as much as I like the selection of alarm sounds, and think they are very appropriate for wake N shake, I would really appreciate the ability to use some of my own MP3 files as alarms. I can understand why Mr Canella might be hesitant to do this, because if a user doesn’t take the time to test their track to make sure that it plays correctly or loudly enough, you can end up with a missed alarm. Still, I would be willing to pay an in-app purchase fee for an interface extension like you see in a many ringtone generator apps, that allows you to select the portion of a track that you want to use. As well as my chosen trumpet reveille gets me out of the bed, I would probably be a little happier about it if LSU’s Pregame or Tiger Rag were playing instead, especially right now during football season. (Geaux Tigers!!)
My other suggestion would be to take the reigns off the notification sounds for those users who don’t mind giving up the extra space on their devices. Again, I can totally understand why Mr Canella decided to pick one tone, as he told me that the app could easily blow up to over 100 MB because of the larger size of notification tones without that limitation. However, for me, that wouldn’t be an issue. I tend to listen to music as in bed while going to sleep, so I don’t usually leave wake N shake in the foreground. This means that the “Bunga Bunga” notification sound is what’s actually waking me up. It works, but just not as well as “Sir, Yes Sir,” so I would rather have the choice and give up a little more space to choose my notification sound. Again, I wouldn’t mind this enhancement being added as an in-app purchase for those who would prefer a little more flexibility, since it adds more work for the developer.
Again, Mr Canella did some very solid work here with his first release in the App Store. wake N shake has a clean and easy to understand design, and it does exactly what it advertises. I also think that the Quick Nap feature is really inventive feature, and is completely fool proof. wake N shake may not be for everyone, but if you are someone like me who needs a little extra oomph to get out of bed in the morning, and is more apt to power nap with a reliable way to get up, this alarm clock is just the ticket.
wake N shake- The Merciless Alarm Clock Pro Shaker Edition is available in the App Store here for $0.99.
The free version is available here.
Andres Canella provided a promo code to iSource for the review of wake N shake- The Merciless Alarm Clock. iSource also received an official beta version of the app from the developer for pre-release testing. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
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TAGS: iPhone alarm clock, iPhone alarm clock apps
