‘Sleep Detection’ Can Delay iPhone Alarm’s Wakeup Setting, Says Apple Patent

Apple landed publication Thursday of a Dec. 6 patent application on using “human sleep detection” to adjust an iPhone’s alarm setting that allows the user to get a full night’s rest, said Patent and Trademark Office records. “Most people do not fall asleep right away when they go to bed,” said the application (20190104985) listing six inventors, including sleep scientist Roy Raymann, a former Apple executive who joined the healthcare research startup SleepScore Labs two years ago. Even someone who goes to bed at “an appropriate time” to get eight hours of sleep will often end up with only six or seven hours “when the alarm goes off in the morning” because of tossing and turning during overnight periods of sleep "latency," it said. The mobile device “can help the user feel more rested by automatically adjusting an alarm,” delaying the wakeup time “based on the determined sleep onset latency,” it said. The science inside the device can also study recent sleep-latency trends to suggest "an earlier bedtime," it said. The application didn't say who would phone the boss when the alarm-delay function causes the user to oversleep. Apple didn’t comment.