We’ve all come across the scenario before. You set up an alarm and upon hearing that annoying sound you snooze it, then sleep some more, until you finally realize that you’ve overslept. One solution to this is to set up multiple alarms (on different devices), the other one is to get HappyWakeUp from Smart Valley.
Based on a medical research on human sleep and structure, HappyWakeUp is the result from the Finnish study conducted in the Tampere University of Technology and the University of Helsinki. The application claims that you will have an easy and refreshed wake up with decreased stress factor, big words in an small application size of 853 kb.
The installation process allows you to install the application on all available memories, that being the phone memory, mass memory and memory card. (For handsets such as the N86 and N97). Before completing the installation process a note is displayed. This note displays all you ever need to know about this application, what it can do for you, how it works and examples on how to use it. It’s quite extensive to read through it all however this is the only note that pops up during installation. The content of this note can be brought up by consulting help in the application, should you be impatient and skip it.
When starting up the application you are immediately met with a pop up saying that there is no alarm found or that the alarm is closer than 25 min. The main screen shows you the current time, the activation time of HappyWakeUp and the time of the alarm. In this case it shows nothing as I haven’t set any alarm yet.
The left softkey is used for accessing options whereas the right goes back or hides the application. From the options you can invoke keypad lock, reset an alarm if set and access settings as well as the typical help, about and exit. The only setting in this application is the activation window, the time HappyWakeUp will wake you up before the alarm time you’ve set. As the application uses the microphone to monitor you, the activation window is the time frame in which it activates the microphone to listen to surrounding sounds. Should it detect that you are moving around in your sleep, it will wake you up with a gentle alarm. You are then given the option to deactivate the alarm all together, both the HappyWakeUp and the alarm you’ve set up on your handset. The time set for the activation window have no restrictions. (Within 24 hours before the actual alarm).
The trial version of the application is restricted to alarms no further than 30 minutes ahead in time and hence works as the free lite version of the application named HappyNap.
Installation process of HappyNap follows the same as the full fledged HappyWakeUp. Upon start HappyNap prompts you if you want to set the application to auto-start, then it will detect if there is any alarms set already. If none then it suggest to set a nap alarm. Both with the option to accept or decline. Should you decline the suggested alarm HappyNap will not activate. You can set an alarm as close as 15 minutes
Similarly from the options you can set a invoke the keypad lock, set a new nap, access settings and consult help. The only setting here is to toggle HappyNap to autostart.
Limitations
As both are 3rd party alarm applications it only checks if there is alarm set and if not it sets one. This unfortunately means that calendar entries with alarms are not detected by these two applications. Another issue with alarms is that if multiple alarms are set only the first alarm is detected and used for detection. The HappyWakeUp from the options of HappyNap don’t bring up the first mentioned application, but instead directs me to the full version on OVI Store. This may be due to the fact that I didn’t get HappyWakeUp from the OVI Store, but should have started the application as I have both installed on my handset. Should you use other fonts with your phone then you’ll come across a huge problem. When using other fonts than the default ones, both applications won’t start at all. This issue however can be solved by using FontRouteMan.
Does it work?
While both applications works as intended the alarm sound can be a bit low. This is understandably something intended by the makers to the claim of a pleasant wake up. However if you are person of habit it’s very easy to just turn of the alarm all together. It is therefore wise to rely totally on the application with one alarm set up, but have another one just in case.
From the Symbian-Guru Store you can download a trial version of HappyWakeUp or buy it for only $4.99 whereas HappyNap can be downloaded from the OVI Store. These two applications are compatible with both S60 3rd edition and S60 5th edition Symbian-powered handsets.
Personally I find both to live up to the claims of giving me happy. Have you tried these applications and how happy did you wake up?
