WakeBox

An alarm clock has one job, and the measure of a good one is whether it wakes you every single time without exception. WakeBox concentrates on that rather than surrounding it with sleep analysis, smart cycles and a subscription. Alarms fire with a full-screen alert that appears even when the device is locked, which is the specific failure mode that catches people out with lesser alarm apps, where a notification arrives quietly behind a lock screen and gets missed. Sound and vibration both work, so the alarm reaches you whether the phone is on a bedside table or under a pillow. Setting alarms is plain. Choose a time, choose whether it repeats and on which days, and manage the list from one clean screen. Every alarm is configured by you and fires only at the time you set, with no automatic adjustments made on your behalf. The app also includes optional access to email through a built-in web view. This is secondary and entirely separate from the alarm function; alarms run independently and are not affected by whether you use it or not. If you have been let down by an alarm app that was busy being clever, the appeal here is that there is very little to go wrong.