HappyWakeUp analyzes your sleep
Ville Vesterinen
A friend of mine at Nokia tipped me off to this wonderful wake up software. HappyWakeUp, a smart alarm clock for your mobile phone, promises to wake you up feeling refreshed every morning. Not a small thing to promise in any measure.
I am particularly keen on getting my good night’s sleep and am already using pzizz for my napping and Phillips Wake-Up Light for my mornings. Pzizz works like magic, but I’ve found the Phillips Wake-Up Light useful only for reading at the evenings. Thus my excitement when I heard about the HappyWakeUp.
HappyWakeUp goes beyond the mere gently sound or light and instead offers us statistical analysis of our sleep pattern for the price of: One week - 2€. Two months - 8.95€. Full license - 49.95€. This is how it works:
HappyWakeUp detects the optimal moment to wake up by monitoring the quality of your sleep using the microphone of the mobile phone. Actually it listens to your movements during the night time. Therefore the phone has to be near to you, preferably on your bed. Detection of the arousals is based on statistical analysis of the microphone signals.
To read more about how the service works go here.
The company does not say where they are based, but since there is the Finnish language option available and the English copy writing has quite a few typos I’m guessing they are from Finland.
It’s a compelling story and I’m eager to try it out. Before trying tho, I need to get a Nokia phone which is a bit of a let down. No happy wake-ups for iphone owners. According to the company behind the service, Smart Valley Software Ltd., the service works only with Symbian 60 3rd edition platform and can be installed in Nokia mobile phones.
I was personally about to get a Nokia phone to go along with my iphone anyway, just to have the video recording capabilities with me at all times. But I can see this nifty service bypassing potentially significant tech savvy market if they are not hard at work with the HappyWakeUp iphone app. A nice opportunity for an iphone app developer perhaps.
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August 18th, 2008 at 10:27 am
The company is Finnish and it’s registered in Vantaa.
http://www.ytj.fi/english/yritystiedot.aspx?yavain=2014832&kielikoodi=3&tarkiste=ED23FC50D87B8A3A14DE28539DA64FF688C4678C&path=1704;1736;2052
for more details.
August 18th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Cheers. Thanks Jon!
August 18th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Nice idea, but in my opinion it’s a bit cheap that they are charging for the one week version. It’s kind like taking money for a demo.
August 19th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
I agree with you Massive. If the service is as good as it sounds a weeks free demo could only help them.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:56 am
regarding only being available for Nokia S60 phones, they are going first for the big market (and iPhone development is still very new).
And it seems to be a growing phenomenon that people are getting both an iPhone and a Nokia (each has strengths and weaknesses)
Regarding charging for 1 week, if it is as good as they think it is, then for less than the price of a beer, you can try it out (very small risk).
Also, it seems that 40-50€ is the normal price for an S60 application.
August 23rd, 2008 at 8:11 pm
I still think making trying the service out for free would be in their own benefit. I’m not saying it’s a lot they are charging, but I am sure it’s too much for a lot of people who are sitting on the fence whether they need such a service or not.
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:53 pm
@milke: “Also, it seems that 40-50€ is the normal price for an S60 application.” really??? and did you drink the blue kool-aid or the red, because i’ll stay away from the one you chose….
40-50 euros is 60-75 USD which is FAR ABOVE the typical cost of an S60 app. I’ve bought and paid for dozens of apps on my Nokia N95 and only paid a price that high for EXTREMELY useful software. i paid for 3 years of navigation on Nokia Maps - that was $130 or so. big bucks, but the alternatives (at the time) were paltry and more expensive (without stealing them). one might pay upward of $100 for a full microsoft office compatible suite… but as microsoft charges at elast 4 times that much, it’s an easy sell.
but for a specialized alarm clock?? $72.18 for an alarm clock? $13.04 for the 60-day license (no 1-week made available for me, running latest v1.10)??? seriously, that’s insane.
i hope they make plenty of money; i’m not against turning a profit. if they did all the research, great - but i don’t think the idea is all that new - i think they’re just capitalizing on an existing concep. nothing wrong with that, but to charge so much for a fairly simple application….
i’m not willing to pay it. flat and simple, i’m more likely to copy the idea and simply write a clone for myself. if i’m gonna pay that kind of money, i expect it to at least tie into the podcasting app and trigger a download of some morning news - maybe use the speech synth to read my local newspaper to me from an RSS feed. how about reminding me to get some sleep perhaps? i mean for $72 USD it should track my sleep pattern through the night and suggest in the morning or following evening that “it appears i haven’t been sleeping well, perhaps you should go to bed earlier tonight?”- or on the weekends to wake me with “you’ve slept beyond a healthy 8 hours, the weather reports says it’s a nice day, why not go for a walk?”
if i’m gonna pay that kind of money, i expect something more than just an ATTEMPT to wake me up at an opportune time in a window 20 minutes prior to my scheduled alarm. and now that i’ve written it all out, i’m downloading the development tools to write myself a fancier, freer version of this overpriced but fantastic idea.
(sorry this turned into a rant, but seriously, i can’t think of any apps but the two mentioned above which could possibly compete with this one for highest-priced-app on symbian platform. there’s simply no precedent for this price)
frustrated,
-bit
September 22nd, 2008 at 11:28 pm
@jared
Great to see someone argues their point. I’d like to see more of this kind of passion in the blog =)