My phone alarm betrayed me. I have vowed to never oversleep again. Since I hate clocks that have any kind of a light (but can tolerate ticking) and also want it to be moderately attractive, it seems my only option is to never sleep.
So what wakes you in the morning?
Fun story: I would LOVE to have an actual alarm clock. I never trust my phone's despite its 99.9% perfection, but as a kid I either had or had something very similar to childhood schizophrenia. This mostly manifested as auditory hallucinations. They weren't too bad most of the time, but the ones that really triggered it, that made it unbearable, were ones induced by my alarm clock. The sound of its ticking became extraordinarily loud. It morphed in my head to the sound of an angry mob, or screaming. At once point it got so bad I ran to my parents and had them put it in the garage, a whole floor below my room. I still heard it and screamed in fear all night. So to this day, the sound of small clocks ticking makes me have a mild panic attack. I'll stick to my phone.
Sorry, I have nothing to add, but I feel vindicated knowing that someone else's phone is a backstabbing prick and that it's not just my imagination.
It seems like my phone won't wake me up if I use it as a kitchen timer the night before. On the upside now I know I can make myself almost presentable in ten minutes so I'm not late to work. I also have an alarm clock that's not very interesting to look at, it plays the radio, CDs and an annoying beep. It has about a 85% success rate of waking me up. I'm a very deep sleeper.
Ouch, sucks to hear that. One of my greatest fears back when I was at college (which I still dream happening even when I have graduated years ago) was sleeping through a midterm or a final. What I discovered back then and do now is to set my phone to ring at multiple times, with 15 minutes separating between each time. So, if I have to wake up at 8:30, I would set my phone to ring at 7:45, 8:00, 8:15, and 8:30. It works pretty well at not making me oversleep past whenever I'm supposed to wake up. Hmm, I just remembered that I also prevented oversleeping in really important dates by drinking lots and lots of water so that I would wake up early to take a gigantic piss. Ah, the wonders of college life.
I use a full out alarm clock radio. It even plays CDs! It lights up green though, because it is a digital clock, but it's lowest setting isn't too bad in terms of brightness. My fan light covered in a dozen layers of electrical tape is about the same. It would be nice if it were dimmer though. I'd post a pic, but I can't really use imgur anymore on my phone after the most recent update.
My wife's iPhone. I have had far too many technological devices betray me at far to great a cost. However, my wife has had no issues... And as a midwife, she wakes the hell up. So i let her set the alarm, and since she's awesome, she makes sure I wake up. It's fabulous.
I use this app on my phone
http://www.sleepcycle.com/ It monitors your breathing and moving during the sleep, so you have to have your phone sort of close to you on your bed, and wakes you up at a point in your sleep cycle were you will feel refreshed. Basically you choose a time you want to wake up and it'll wake you up in the 30 min time frame up to that time that coincides with the lightest phase of your sleep cycle. It honestly is amazing for waking up feeling refreshed and not groggy. However, I'm still pretty lazy and will use the snooze button on it or just stay in bed and go back to sleep even if I'm not actually tired when I wake up.
An iPhone. I put my phone on 24-hr time after an unfortunate day-napping incident in which I rushed off to work twelve hours early, thinking I was late, even telling my co-worker so much, until having this weird "Does 7am look... like this?" moment just before getting a text message back saying, and I quote, "???" Still getting used to 00:01 and company, but otherwise it isn't tough to figure out.