Which side of the bed did you get up on this morning? Standard alarm clocks don’t care, so long as they awaken you on time. The HappyWakeUp app is designed to care, and it uses an incredibly smart algorithm to try to wake you up at the time when you will be in the best mood to get up.

How can it do this? Is it magic? Does it read minds? Not exactly, but sort of. HappyWakeUp was invented by a pioneering doctor of sleep psychology, Tapani Salmi, MD PhD, using an algorithm he and others developed about the tail end of the normal sleep cycle. Research conducted in two Finnish universities, Tampere University of Technology and the University of Helsinki, resulted in the development of a brand-new technology for screening and even diagnosing sleep disorders. HappyWakeUp is the first implementation of that technology available on a mobile phone.

In essence, the studies showed that in the last 20 minutes before wake up time, your brain can swing between nearly-conscious and a deep sleep stage, as in the chart below. If you are awakened from a moment of deep sleep, you will be more tired than if you are awakened from a moment of near-consciousness.

HappyWakeUp is designed to waken you at one of those peak moments just before your scheduled wake up alarm time. If it doesn’t detect one of those peak moments, it just lets the regular alarm clock do its job.

How does the application know what your brain is up to? By using the microphone of the S60 3rd Edition or S60 5th Edition device, the application follows your breathing patterns. It starts charting those patterns about two hours before your scheduled wake up time, and it triggers a pleasant, pre-emptive wakeup sound at the optimum time within the 20 minutes of your alarm time. Both the analysis time and the run-up time to the alarm are adjustable, but it basically needs that analysis time to determine your sleep patterns.

I tried it using my Nokia N95, which is an S60 3rd Edition FP1 device. The 3rd Edition version of the software can be downloaded from the HappyWakeUp website, and the S60 5th Edition version can be downloaded from Ovi Store. The price for the app ranges from a free one-week trial to $14.99 for a full version of the app in Ovi Store.

To use HappyWakeUp, I first had to set an alarm time on my regular alarm clock application on the N95. In that sense, HappyWakeUp is a dependent application, in that it automatically senses the alarm time(s) that you have set on your Alarm Clock application.

I set the Clock application for 7:30 a.m., and used the defaults on HappyWakeUp. Per the instructions, I kept the N95 close to my pillow during the night. Sure enough, it did wake me with a pleasant chime during the 20 minute interval before the 7:30 a.m. alarm.

Here’s a video demo of what HappyWakeUp offers:

Did I wake up more refreshed than I would have with just the regular alarm? That is a very deep question, as the whole area of sleep research is still in its infancy and we are just beginning to become aware that between 10 percent and 20 percent of all adults suffer from some sort of sleeping disorder. If the sleep researchers at the two Finnish universities are correct, however, this application will be worth much more than its price of purchase.

HappyWakeUp does not claim to be a substitute for medical technology such as forced air sleep apnea breathing machines, but in terms of diagnostics it has the potential with future enhancements to be a real cost-effective breakthrough. My only concern is with restless sleepers who turn over frequently during the night. The distance to the smartphone microphone might vary greatly in these circumstances, and the algorithms will have to compensate for that. The current version already seems to have taken into account filtering out the possibility of a second party snoring in the bed.

Have you tried HappyWakeUp? Let us know what apps help get you rolling in the morning in the comments section below.