Alarming your Treo

There's something that I have been obsessing over for a while.  Namely, finding a simple (no stylus required), quick and yet powerful alarm clock for my Treo - preferably one that could play mp3's and would thus allow me to wake up listening to the charming sound of one of my favourite tunes as opposed to some deafening beep, chime or ring of various kinds typically found on our Treo.

My starting point was the built-in alarm which is (not obviously) placed inside World Clock (when you open the app it's at the top right hand corner).

In World Clock there is only one alarm which is set by clicking the case marked Off, selecting the time (hour + minutes) and pressing OK.  You cannot set repeating alarms for the week as each time you clear it it will reset back to Off.  Meanwhile, the alarm sounds are limited to six none of which I found to be particularly enticing.

My next evaluation took me on to Treo Alarm which proved to be a huge improvement (an understatement).

For starters, Treo Alarm has 8 alarms (you may want to wake up at a different time every day...) and each can be set with a unique name, a particular or multiple day(s) of the week and naturally time.  You can also choose to start your wireless connection with the alarm (if you switch it off in the evenings), automatically receive a free weather update (downloaded from Yahoo Weather or the US/Canadian National Weather Service) and assign a sound from among any of the installed tones on your Treo (about 30 in all and Bach Sonata proved to be my favourite).

While there is much to like about Treo Alarm I was ultimately not happy with the sound limitation and also found the time entry for the alarm to be a bit cumbersome using my thumbs.  Still, in its current (beta) iteration this is without a doubt the best free alarm clock that you're likely to find for your Treo.

Lastly and more recently I came across Bob's Alarm which has rapidly become my preferred application to wake up in the morning.

As I mentioned, one of the principal features that I was looking for was support for mp3 alarms and Bob's Alarm has the benefit of integrating with my Pocket Tunes and using mp3's on my SD card.  However, Bob's Alarm is far superior on many other fronts as well.

Bob's Alarm 'home' screen displays the current time (in nice big bold numbers) and date as well as three simple icons to access the alarm, timer and stopwatch.   Additionally, you also get to see a countdown to your next alarm which I found extremely useful although having the actual time of the alarm displayed would prove helpful as well.

There are two alarms which can be set to repeat once, daily, Mon-Fri, Sat/Sun, by individual day or customized with your own start and end dates.  One of the best functionalities is that to set the alarm time you simply place your thumb above/below the center of the number you want to change and it will cycle upward/downward.  Additionally, you have an extensive choice of Settings where you'll be able to choose a) the sound you want (Wave, mp3, MIDI and Bob's own sounds); b) the various timings related to your alarm; c) a miscellaneous option to select or disable vibrate and d) the option to trigger a timer or application of your choice after you click Snooze, Cancel or another button when the alarm sounds in the morning.

Aside from this there are also two timers and two stopwatches which have similar customization options.  Additionally, select Preferences in the menu for access to even more settings.  One of the only annoying things that I found is that you need to manually input the path to the folder on your SD card that Bob's Alarm will use to play your Wave or mp3's which will prove tedious unless you happen to have all of your individual songs in one folder and not multiple ones like me.

While each of the above three alarms has its merits, my own personal preference for its overall simplicity, flexibility and feature set - including mp3 support - is without a doubt Bob's Alarm - a terrific application to add to your Treo. 

UPDATE: Bob let me know that:

One thing I should mention is that BA only limits you to 2 alarms, timers and SW while it is in 'demo' mode. Registered versions get 255 events, plus you can name each event and apply all kinds of custom settings.

Regarding the wave/mp3 path setting, I've been meaning to allow subfolders for some time now, but just haven't gotten around to it. This will happen, and the more people ask for it the sooner it will happen.

Please help me and also ask Bob to make it happen...

UPDATE2: We liked Bob so much that we've now added his app to our software store!  Buy/Try Bob's Alarm.

Treonauts want to wake up to their tunes...