A friend and I were talking and he was saying that he’s encountered a lot of people who use their cel phone as an alarm clock, with invariably poor results (because a cel phone isn’t loud or jarring enough).
So: do you use your cel phone as an alarm? Is it always loud/jarring enough to be a viable replacement for a real alarm clock?
I’ve used my cell phone as my alarm clock for over 3 years now, (and that’s 3 different cell phones). I’ve had no problems. On previous phones, I chose the most obnoxious ringtone I could so I’d be sure to be aroused enough by it because I hated the sound, rather than depending upon volume per se. My current phone, a BlackBerry, has a particularly loud ringtone (BBPro_VintageAlarm) that works spectacularly.
If I’m not sleeping in a room with a normal alarm clock, I’ll use my phone. I make sure to turn the volume up and use an actual alarm sound for it and it works just fine. I know a handful of people that use their phone regularly and they’ve never mentioned any issues.
I’ve been using it as an alarm for at least the past 10 years. It’s never failed me yet. Where are you getting the idea that it’s not loud enough? That’s preposterous.
I’ve used mine as an alarm for years, never had a problem. But it’s not like I need some kind of fog horn to wake up.
I use my cellphone as an alarm. I turn it off and go back to sleep pretty regularly, but that’s what I do with regular alarms, too.
Have used it for a few years now. Works fine.
much better than an alarm clock, since i prefer waking up to my choice of music or podcasts.
I use mine with no issues. It sits on the table beside my bed, so volume isn’t really an issue. I use a nice tone (BB_Grooves_Interlude on the BB).
I use mine, but if the battery is low I’ll use my ipod as a backup alarm. If both batteries are low I’ll plug the ipod in (It may get left plugged in long after fully charged, but I care less about my ipod battery than I do about my phone’s battery)
In general: Acceptable? Yes. Ideal? No. (because true alarm clocks don’t run out of battery - at least the ones you plug in don’t)
When traveling I’ve occasionally used my cell as an alarm - do turn up the volume all the way and pick an annoying sound, though.
I stopped using alarm clocks because they often didn’t wake me up, my cell phone (ringtone+vibrate) has a much higher succes rate.
Yes. For years.
I’ve used my cell phone as an alarm for years now with no problems. But I rarely get so little sleep that I would sleep through it. I can see, though, where it might be a problem for some people. A cell phone alarm wouldn’t have been sufficient to wake me up in high school, when I was routinely getting by on 4 or 5 hours of sleep for days at a time.
On my side of the bed, I have an alarm clock. On the other, my girlfriend uses her phone. This is a great source of irritation as her best friend has a habit of going out late, hooking up with random men, and drunk texting ‘yooou’re my bezz and I luuurve you’ at 3 o’clock in the morning.
I would rather all phones were banned from the bedroom.
Cellphone is better, because I have to rummage around the bed to find it and turn it off. Alarm clocks are stationary, I can literally turn them off in my sleep.
I also use my cellphone, and have since the third device before the present one. Never had a problem with it’s being not loud enough.
A main advantage is that I have to fumble around a bit more to silence the alarm, compared with a typical alarm clock.
Not my previous cell phones, but my new LG Ally android phone is what I rely upon now. Fast and easy to set and disable. Lights up, vibrates, alarms. I work nights, so I have an afternoon wake up, a short nap alarm for the evening, a stop what you are doing and go to work set.
And I can set it to go off only on certain days of the week, like say 8:45 Thursdays, unlike my old bedside clock radio. You can set a probably unlimited number of alarms. 10:00 am Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays only, for example.
I am never going back to programing a bed side clock that will only accept an am and pm alarm only.
For me the smart phone has already replaced my watch, alarm clock, will probably soon replace my Ipod, has replaced my GPS, digital camera, video camera, etc. I could ditch my entire home based computer network if I wanted to, because the phone is just as fast and the only drawback is it’s small screen; the keyboard is actually more intuitive than my home computer.
Hell, I haven’t even approached the potential use for this one tool, and the tools are getting better as I type.
Scan a bar code in the market and be shown where to buy the product cheaper in my area. Point it at a random star in the sky and be told the name of the star and constellation.
My bed side digital alarm clock is an obsolete anachronism. Which is kind of funny in a way.
I use my iPhone with a 100% success rate.
My iPhone is too quiet. Can’t trust it at all. I use a unactivated Blackberry as a backup alarm clock since it’s got an awesome loud ring. I still use a standard alarm clock as my primary. Realistically, the Blackberry is more reliable than my alarm clock and that’s why it serves as the backup since it can be more obnoxiously loud.