How Sleep Cycle Works
Sleep Cycle relies on your smartphone’s accelerometer to monitor movement.
The idea is that you place your smartphone near you in bed and that it will register movements.
When you are in deeper sleep, especially REM sleep, it will document this stillness.
LaylaBird / Getty Images
Pros
The interface of the app is slick.
you could choose an alarm sound (including a favorite song) and set your snooze options.
You select a 30-minute period that you wish to awaken during.
It’s similar to documenting your sleep patterns with a sleep diary and monitoring it with anactigraph.
Cons
The Sleep Cycle app does have some drawbacks.
Battery drain: for function, the program must run overnight and this will slowly drain your battery.
I would pick the later time to be the time when I absolutely had to wake up.
I never really felt that I awakened more refreshed because of the perfectly timedalarm clock.
It should not be used as an alternative to more sophisticated sleep studies.
The New York Times/Wirecutter.The Best Sleep-Tracking App.
Sleep Cycle.How Sleep Cycle works.
