If you are like me, you also have a problem waking up in the morning. By nature I am not an early riser and, most of the time, I have trouble leaving the comfort of my bed in the morning. Or even worse – I tend not hear the alarm go off at all.
I’ve been researching the topic of how I might facilitate the process of waking up and I’ve stumbled upon some apps which promise interesting things. Gentle Wakeup Alarm Clock – which theorizes that sleepers can wake up naturally by light. According to the creators of the app – light leads to biological process in the body leaving the deep sleep phase and preparing to wake up. So in theory the app should help me to wake up gently and refreshed every day. So naturally I had to give it a try.
This idea is actually based on a scientific theory which states that a very beneficial way to wake up refreshed is to rise during a period of your lightest sleep. Being woken in a light stage has proven to make people more energetic and alert upon awakening.
Setup
You can download the app for free from the Google Play Store. However, a Premium version is also available. You can upgrade to Premium from within the app for $5 a pop (which unlocks more Sound options). Once the app is installed all you need to get started is to access it. When you open the app for the first time, you’ll be asked whether you’d like to watch a video tutorial. If you think you can find your way around the app without watching it, then go ahead and skip it.
App Experience
When you open the app – all you will be able to see is the date and time, as all the other features are hidden on purpose. With a single tap on the display you can make additional options visible.
The whole purpose of the app is to let you configure your alarm clock in a way that suits you. So go on to Settings which is located in the lower right corner and tap it. From there you can click the Add button to add the time you want to be woken up. From the same panel, you can customize what you see on the main screen.
You can ask the app to display the date, day of the week, time, seconds, 24 hours mode, time for next wake up and more. You also have Brightness Settings at your disposal. You can choose the transparency of text, app brightness for light on and app brightness for light off. You should start playing with these features and see which one suits you best. What’s more the app can deliver Weather information as well (once you set your location)
Tapping on the Alarm you just set up, will reveal a bunch of options that help you customize your wake up process. The app is built on the idea that light can wake you up. That’s why the alarm will start weaving its magic with 20 minutes earlier than the intended wake-up hour, in order to prepare your body for wakeup.
However, the app offers other wakeup methods too like Sound and Vibration. And yes, you can combine all of them into a more powerful alarm system. Wake up by Sound allows you to choose the type of sound you want to hear (frogs, rooster, and train – whatever floats your boat). You can also choose the time after which the sound should reach its final intensity.
Add vibration to this equation and your phone will light up, buzz and produce animal sounds – all at the same time. Which should guarantee you’ll be jumping out of bed.
After setting/saving the alarm, you can go back to the main screen. You’ll see your next alarm which is set to start 20 minutes before the actual desired waking time.
I like the fact that there are a lot of options available and you can experiment with different combinations to see which suits your particular wake-sleep cycle. On the down side, the interface is quite boring and outdated. I would have liked to see a more modern interface.
Results
When it comes to results – don’t expect something spectacular. As I told you before, I’m a pretty deep sleeper that usually has to be up by 7.30 AM. Well given that we’re in spring now and the sun rises by 6.30 AM, the alarm’s light signal becomes almost useless. Only when the frogs started making noises (sound alarm) and the vibrations started was I bothered to open my eyes.
Also, if you want to rely only on the lighting scheme to wake, you will need to place your device in your immediate vicinity – which is not something I tend to be down for. I like to leave my phone on a night stand beside my bed which is not super close to my bed. Another inconvenience is that you absolutely need to leave your device charged in overnight – as the alarm starts 20 minutes earlier, you risk waking up to a drained phone.
But once the alarm gets going, it’s pretty difficult to make it stop. In theory all you need to do is move the slider showing on the screen to the right. But that proves to be more complicated than it needs to be. I had to slide my finger numerous times before the noise finally stopped and instead of waking up refreshed, I woke up really annoyed. The snooze option (tapping on the screen) also proved glitchy at times.
On top of that, I noticed there’s no way you can set an alarm for the current day – an option that might come in handy for those who like taking naps.
Overall
Gentle Wakeup Alarm Clock is built around a great idea – deliver an app that can help you wake up gently. However, the implementation leaves a little to be desired. It would be nice if the team would upgrade the interface and give it a 2017 look and squish the bugs that need to be neutralized. Also unlocking the “premium” features is a bit more expensive than it needs to be. However, if you’d like to try out the whole wake up by light scheme, you can try the app for free. Still, I’d recommend to test the app out in winter when the sun rises later during the day (unless you live in a Norse country).
For me, Gentle Wakeup proved to be more of a glorified Alarm Clock, but maybe it will work differently for you – given that everyone’s sleep/wake cycle is different.
Post-Review Update:
We reached out to the author about some of the issues that we experienced and he had some encouraging responses. Material design is coming in the next update, which is proposed for some time in April. He also intends to fix the slider to make it more functional.
He also states that the light may not need to be directly in your line of sight but just near you so that your subconscious mind can recognize the change in light levels.
We look forward to seeing what improvements are in store for Gentle Wakeup.
With the new update, users will be allowed to tap on individual topics or areas of interest and get an entire feed of stories related to it. For example, if you tap on entertainment, you’ll prompt Google to respond with information about the latest shows on TV, timetables and trailers.
Google also notes it will be adding more shortcuts corresponding to major event, such as the 
However, a user on 
The Pixel-style nav buttons are also present now. And since there is no Google Assistant on tablets, expect the home button to just look like a regular circle.
Keep in mind that the update is currently available for members of the beta program, but a public Android 7.1.2 build should make it out in the upcoming weeks.
It all sounded quite promising, but now a report coming out of the Wall Street Journal is putting a damper on our enthusiasm. According to the information, Sprint’s parent company SoftBank has decided to withdraw the $100 million funding meant to help the Andy Rubin and his team transform the Essential into a real life product.
To be clear the 
We heard for the first time that 
The Apollo X is poised to take advantage of a similar solution dubbed OXI Desktop. Basically OXI will allow owners of the Apollo X run multi-window mode on their smartphone or tablet – which is said makes the Android feel more like a desktop OS.
However, while the Galaxy S8 DeX is actually a dock, Vernee’s Apollo X is said to come pre-installed with OXI which is called a software adaptation.
The outside of the earcups have a dotted design and the left has a pressable button. A short press of the button plays or pauses and a long press opens up Google Assistant on my OnePlus 3T. It’s a nice intersection of form and functionality. The microphone bump that sits just below the earcups is able to pick up my voice clearly and people on the other end of calls said I sounded just fine.
Another area where these are a miss on is how they fit. It feels like Xiaomi made the band that sits on top of your head too long. These would sit wonderfully on the round head of an emoji, but for real world, it should have been a bit more narrow.
The headphones don’t squeeze my head at all, which is nice for comfort but can make them come off my head when whipping around to talk to someone standing behind me. Luckily the earcups are pretty deep and hold a little bit or it would be a dire situation. The cups hold these to your head and do it very comfortably. The soft leather-ish pads are extremely comfortable and are among the best I’ve ever felt.
Would I give my Sennheisers up for these? No, but I also don’t recommend going out and spending $100 extra dollars on something like that unless you have the cash to toss away. I find that the listening experience is almost as good as my HD598s and that’s pretty incredible when you take into account the price difference ($150 vs. $30)
The setup for Cornerfly is straightforward, but there are a couple of permissions it needs to run. First, you need to enable System Overlay to allow it to draw over other apps. This is what allows it to create the actual round corners on the display. Second, you need to grant it access to Accessibility Service so it can put a permanent notification in your notification shade that allows for quick tuning of the corners on a per-app basis. I have to commend Cornerfly for explaining exactly why it needs these permissions when it asks you for them. It lets you know that there is nothing shady going on behind the scenes. After you grant these two permissions, you are taken directly into the app, and your round corners will be there to great you.
After a couple of weeks using Cornerfly, I must say I love the look of rounded corners. I am using on an Alcatel IDOL 4S, which has an AMOLED display. I am not sure how good this would look on a device without an AMOLED display. Since this display shows pure black for the rounded corners, they blend in seemlessly with the body, and it is convincing that the display actually has rounded corners. I am not sure if it would have the same effect on a display with a backlight.
Cornerfly is extremely simply to use and customize. In fact, you could exit the app right after setup, and I doubt you would ever need to open it again. However, there are some neat features in the app to fine tune your experience. We are looking at the Plus version (which is only a $0.99 in-app purchase away), but almost every feature will be available in the free version as well. Aside from removing advertising, the only feature added with the Plus version is the option to change corner sizing. With this feature, you can choose just how curved the corners of your display are. Although this is a pretty fun feature, I found that the default corner size was just fine and probably won’t bother anyone.
There is a persistent Cornerfly notification that you can disable in the app, but I recommend leaving it enabled. The notification is located at the bottom of your notifications, and can actually come in handy. It gives you quick access to customize Cornerfly based on the app your in. You can have the corners be above or below the status bar, above or below the navigation bar (if you have on-screen buttons), and just disable Cornerfly in that app completely. If you are super picky about what shows up in your notification shade, you can disable it, but I would keep it for the quick customization options.
