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How every smartphone platform gets the alarm clock wrong

tilden.github.io

41–50 of 59 posts

Re: How every smartphone platform gets the alarm clock wrong

#41
post #3

What annoys me most is hitting snooze by mistake, you then have to open the clock app to toggle it off and on. Otherwise you alarm goes off while you are in the shower, resulting in angry wife!

On stock Android the snoozed alarm is a notification. You can dismiss it directly from the notification panel.

Re: How every smartphone platform gets the alarm clock wrong

#42
post #4
post #3

What annoys me most is hitting snooze by mistake, you then have to open the clock app to toggle it off and on. Otherwise you alarm goes off while you are in the shower, resulting in angry wife!

The default android clock app will give you a notification about an upcoming alarm, and give you the option to dismiss it in advance (once of course) without having to open it.

iOS gives a notification, but swiping it opens the clock application instead of disabling the snooze. Oh, and it removes the snooze notification.

To disable the snooze you have to remember which alarm triggered and switch it off (then back on)

Re: How every smartphone platform gets the alarm clock wrong

#43
post #8

iOS gets this really wrong. More than once I've accidentally swiped it to 'off' in an effort to hit the snooze button, then slumbered on for an hour. And then there's the fact that to disable the alarm during a snooze period, you have to go into the clock app and manually switch it off, which is a pain. And don't get me started on the pointless complexity of the 'Which days would you like this alarm on' feature - the…

Android user here, but I like the "select active days" option. I'm able to set a standing alarm for 6:30 on weekdays without having to turn it on/off for the weekends. If I want a one off alarm I use voice commands and a little popup gives me a sanity check "7 hours, 8 minutes from now"

Likewise, never had any issue and being able to set up different alarms on weekdays and weekends is really nice, I've no interest waking up at 6AM on weekends but have to do so on weekdays. And disabling the alarm puts me at high risk of not remembering to enable it again.

Re: How every smartphone platform gets the alarm clock wrong

#44

I would be happy with the app knowing which button I press. On my iPhone if I push the home button it could snooze, if I hit power or volume it would stop. trying to hit some arbitrary button on the screen is not my idea of fun, I don't want to even look at the screen. My phone has physical buttons I can determine by touch alone, use them

For me Android gets this exactly right. I've trained myself to swipe left to snooze, right to turn the alarm off. It's all muscle memory for me at this point.

Re: How every smartphone platform gets the alarm clock wrong

#45
post #10
post #3

What annoys me most is hitting snooze by mistake, you then have to open the clock app to toggle it off and on. Otherwise you alarm goes off while you are in the shower, resulting in angry wife!

This is my problem with snooze functionality. Not very often would I actually like to snooze. I'd prefer to eliminate the option as a whole and simply set my alarm back for N minutes if I decide to sleep longer that morning. That also helps a little with the problem of snap decision making that happens so often when it comes to how many times to hit snooze. If you actually have to think about how much longer you can…

On iOS at least, you can disable snooze entirely on a per-alarm basis. That's pretty much essential for other alarms than wakeup, even regular ones.

Re: How every smartphone platform gets the alarm clock wrong

#46
On an early 2000s Ericsson phone they used the proximity sensor for snoozing. You could wave your hand over the phone to snooze it (and similarly to silence the ringtone when somebody was calling).

To disable the alarm you would actually need to press a button.

http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/user_reviews.php?phone=44

I bet there are lots of UX innovations like this in older devices waiting to be rediscovered... I wrote about that last summer http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/leap-motion-virtual-interfaces/

Re: How every smartphone platform gets the alarm clock wrong

#47
post #36

Using the default Android alarm clock, in my sleepy state, I would sometimes forget whether I wanted to "snooze" or "dismiss". I've been using Timely (mentioned in the article) for about 6 months now, and I love it. I use a feature that forces you to do a puzzle before the alarm will turn off. Unfortunately, my sleepy self recently discovered that I can dismiss the alarm (turn it off) without the puzzle though, by cl…

My sleepy self got real good at math when I set puzzles to disable the alarm.

Re: How every smartphone platform gets the alarm clock wrong

#48

I don't agree that the current way of doing this is "wrong" and that the author's suggestion is "right." Those terms imply objective reasons as to why is one is better, where this is primarily preference, I believe.

Yeah, but the shame is that the author needs to make this bold claim in order to get readership, when the nuances of user experience are not black and white.
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