A couple or so months ago I decided to try a new app (application) on my iPhone5 called Sleep Cycle.
The app has an alarm that wakes you up during the “best” time so as not to interrupt you when you’re in a deep sleep. You have the ability to set a “window” of time for it to do so. I set the alarm before I go to bed and put it under the fitted sheet next to my pillow.
The app is supposed to be able to tell when I’m in a deep sleep, regular sleep or awake. If you look at the snapshot I took below, it shows I started my sleep cycle at 10:49 p.m. — right before I went to bed. I turned it off at 6:31 a.m. On this particular day, I turned the alarm off before it actually went off because, well, I was awake. On the day shown below, the app said:
- My sleep quality was 85%. I’ve noticed that the longer I sleep the better my sleep quality seems to be. I’m not sure if that’s a good indication of my sleep quality though.
- I was in bed 7 hours and 41 minutes
- My heart rate (when I woke up) was at 72 bpm (beats per minute). The app uses the camera on the phone to determine my heart heart. I simply put my finger over it and it calculates the bpm.
- I have 22 days of data so far on the app.
- It’s calculated that in those 22 days I’ve slept 6.7 days. Hmmm … is that good?
- My average time in bed is 7 hours and 16 minutes. This number can be manipulated because you can delete days you don’t like — for instance, I had one day when I didn’t fall asleep until 2 a.m. and woke up at 6 a.m. I deleted that particular day because it was not a “true” measure of how much I normally sleep.
If you scroll further down on the main screen, it shows your shortest, longest, best and worst night. 
On the settings page you can:
- turn the alarm off or on
- select what kind of sound you want to wake up to and how loud you want it to be
- set your wake-up phase (the amount of time you want the app to consider before waking you up at your “peak” time, etc.)
If you keep scrolling down, this is the rest of what you’ll see on the settings screen. The Sleep Cycle app also gives charts that show:
- Sleep quality per day of the week
- Time in bed per day of the week
- What time you went to bed
- How long you were in bed
- Your heart rate
Here is an example of a “list” the app makes that shows how I slept each day. According to the chart below, Saturdays are my best sleeping days — I usually sleep in on Sundays.
This app does have what I believe is a flaw. Since I don’t sleep alone (hello husband!) and if my husband should get up to go to the bathroom, the app must feel his movement also, don’t you think? And — what if I can’t sleep and decide to go some place else to read? Will the app assume I’m in deep sleep because I’m not moving around much?
Overall, it’s an okay app — especially because when I got it, it was free. Â Â IÂ like free!
Has anyone else tried it?
