QUICK LOOK

• Sleep graph history                                           
• Wakes you in light sleep
• Records the sound of you snoring
• Calculates your sleep ‘debt’
• Available in the Android Marketplace

I have to confess, I’m one of those annoyingly bright and chipper morning people that non-morning people loathe. As a general rule, I like to spring out of bed promptly at 6:30 with a grin on my face, singing, doing cartwheels, ready to embrace the day – and I struggle to understand those who want to lie in bed until 9:00.

That said, I’m slightly less excited about life if I’m sleep deprived, in which case waking up is probably the biggest challenge I’m likely to accomplish during that day.

Sleep as a Droid is a fantastic answer to this problem. It’s far more than just an alarm app: it actually tracks your sleep cycle so that it wakes you up when you’re in light sleep, meaning you’re far more likely to emerge from bed an adorable, hair-tussled damsel than a hate-breathing morning dragon. You don’t need to hook up the phone to your brain with ECG wires to do this, either: all you do is place the phone on the mattress next to you as you sleep and the phone’s accelerometer will be able to tell, from your rate of tossing and turning, how deeply asleep you are.

When you set the morning alarm, you give yourself a half hour window in which to wake up, and the app will predict the precise moment when it’s best to do this and starts playing gentle reed-pipe music to you, gradually louder, until you’re awake.

I’ve been using the app for a couple of weeks now, and it almost always seems to wake you at exactly the right time (just as the dream is wrapping up, as Johnny Depp is pulling his pants back on…). Sometimes, though, you have to accept that the best time is right at the beginning of your half-hour window, and you may feel slightly cheated of that extra, precious, 29 minutes.

The app comes with a number of other nifty features as well. When you wake up, you can see a detailed graph of how you slept that night (and you rate your sleep as you wake, so you can look at your historical graphs and see what kind of pattern works best for you). 

Some interesting finds come out of this; for instance, for me it finally settled a years-long debate with the boyfriend. He’s been telling me for years that every morning, at 3am, I get up to pee (without waking up). As I have no memory of this, I’ve been convinced that he was hallucinating.

But clear as day, there on the sleep graph is me getting out of bed every night at 3am. Damn you, app, for proving me wrong.

As well as helping to identify if you too may be an unaware sleep walker (or pee-er, in my case), Sleep as a Droid can be set to automatically start recording any noises you make during the night so that you can settle similar debates around snoring and sleep talking (I think the wife of the popular Sleep Talking Man uses an app like this – check out this blog if you’ve never seen it, it’s hilarious).Just remember to turn this function off if you happen to wake up in the middle of the night for a little romp.

Sleep really is one of those major factors that decides whether your day is wonderful or awful. This app is a brilliant way to make sure it’s always a little better.

Turn Ons

• You do feel more refreshed when you wake up
• The sleep graphs are fascinating
• It tells you when it’s the best time for you to go to bed

Turn Offs

• Sometimes it wakes you half an hour earlier than you’d like
• Becomes slightly less accurate if you’re sharing a bed
• Might teach you embarrassing truths about your sleep behaviour

Price: Mahala!