My Iphone makes a great alarm clock. It’s plenty loud enough to get me up.
My husband and I both use our phones. As mentioned, it’s very nice to be able to set it for M-F, and to not have to remember to turn it on before bed. It’s also very nice to be able to change the alarm tune easily when I start to grow immune to one. I’m no more likely to sleep through it than through a traditional alarm clock. I use multiple alarms–for instance, if I am taking antibiotics, I’ll set an alarm to remind me to take a pill. Very, very handy.
Have done for years. The sound of it vibrating on the little wooden table next to my bed is enough to wake me usually, never mind the volume of the alarm tone.
Done so for years without problem. Volume is set at Medium for alarm and phone use. My latest phone has an alarm sound option called “Froggy Night” that blends croaking frogs with what I think is down-home banjo plucking, wryly amusing me first moment of every day.
I have to vouch for the Blackberry as being a great alarm, too. Not only is it noisy as hell, but I can leave my phone on vibrate/silent so I don’t get woken up by my nightly email bombardment and it will still play the alarm aloud. Also, it will turn itself on (out of standby) to play the alarm.
The main downside, and its a BIG one sometimes, is that a menu pops up with Snooze and Dismiss options when the alarm goes off. When I mash the trackball to snooze, I sometimes turn the alarm off and end up having a white knuckle commute later on.
Thanks for the replies, folks. I relayed the gist of the replies to my friend, and told him that I think the problem is less the alarm on the cel phone, and more the (seemingly unreliable) people that he sometimes deals with.
My cell phone works great as an alarm clock for me. It is a bit quiet; but I’m a light sleeper, and it’s never failed to awaken me. Also, I get up earlier than my wife, and she’s a heavy sleeper, so the low volume is kind of a bonus, as it doesn’t disturb her at all. (Actually, virtually nothing disturbs her at all. The alarm clock she had when I met her was the first one she’d found that would consistently rouse her from deep slumber. She accidentally left it set when she went away for a long weekend, and nearly got evicted–neighbors several apartments away complained to the landlord about the noise.)
For almost four years now, no problem. I plug it in each night before bed, so there’s never a battery issue, and I’m a light sleeper, so unless I’m sleeping with earplugs, I just leave it on vibrate and sitting on a hard surface. Haven’t slept through it yet.
No. At least not if something important’s at stake.
only drawback I have is that being a smart phone, sometimes it can be run down and turnoff overnight. I just need to double check it has enough charge.
I just leave it charging overnight as smartphones pretty much need a daily charge. I kind of assume that the battery management circuits/software doesn’t let the battery get damaged. I hope, anyway.
If you jailbreak it, you can remove Apple’s software cap on the volume and get it nearly 3x as loud (at least on the 3GS; other models may be different). Before I did so, I could easily sleep though the most obnoxious alarm sound because it was too quiet; now, I can have it play a random song out of my library and it’ll always wake me up.
My brother has this as his alarm sound on his phone. If that isn’t enough, I don’t know what would be.
Have been using various smartphones as alarm clocks for years.
I can’t fathom this. I am a heavy sleeper and the iphone alarm selections are some of the most obnoxious and loud I’ve ever heard. There are a few sounds like Timba and Sonar that aren’t loud enough; don’t use those.
I also like that the alarm still sounds even if I’ve forgotten to switch the phone back from silent mode.
I’ve done it on both my 2G and 3G iPhones. They are still embarrassingly quiet. I can’t understand how anyone would be satisfied with the iPhones speaker volume. On my 2G I even did the hack where you puncture the dust film with a pin to gain volume. I can at least hear it ringing from the other room now, but it’s still not alarm clock worthy.
You seem to be the minority. There’s a VAST number of Youtube and Blogs devoted solely to hacks to pump the iPhones volume. It’s a well known shortcoming of the device.
I should also mention that my phone is pretty close to my head when I’m sleeping, and on a hard surface. That probably helps.* But maybe you just need more volume than me to wake up.
Plus, my last phone before my iPhone was a Treo 650, and a Treo 600 before that, and they’re even quieter than the iPhone. So I needed a separate alarm clock. But I used a non-activated Blackberry as that separate alarm clock, so it still fits. 
- In fact, a couple days ago, it definitely helped–I accidentally had it set to vibrate as well as ringing, and it vibrated right off the table and fell on my face, which woke me up instantly. Also, occasionally, there’s a cat sleeping on it, so when the alarm goes off, the cat does too, which helps even more.
OMG… you’ve swallowed the KoolAid…
I see what you’re getting at, though. I’m just not ready to ditch full-sized hardware (laptop/netbook sized) yet.
It generally works for me. When I wake up at a consistent time, it usually doesn’t take much to wake me–I just need a signal that “Now is the time to open your eyes, turn on a light, put on your glasses and generally start waking up”.
I use my iPhone as an alarm. I have an app that plays music from the iPod and the internal
speaker is plenty loud enough for me. I have a battery pack it slides into that keeps it charged about 8 hours or so, plenty of juice to keep it charged while I sleep.
It’s fine for me. There’s one specific tone that’s VERY loud - much louder than the others. That’s the one I use.
Joe