Radio Alarm ($1.99) is a beautifully designed alarm-clock app that can run in the background and wake you up with your favorite radio station or iPod music. But that’s not all it does, as it has a nice set of complementary features, including a sleep timer, soothing nature sounds to go to sleep to, and Retina Display-friendly graphics.

Although you probably shouldn’t rely on your iPhone to wake you up every morning (a lot can go wrong), Radio Alarm has quickly become my favorite app to do so. The app supports a local Chicago station, WBBM, I like to listen to in the morning. So it’s nice to have the station fade up in volume to gently wake me until I’m ready to hop out of bed. And if I want to keep listening over my morning coffee, I just carry the iPhone with me.

A nice touch in the app is that you can set any combination of days of the week for the alarm to go off. For example, you could create an alarm that only goes off only Mon-Fri, or Sat and Sun, or Mon, Thurs, etc.

The app uses the Shoutcast directory of online radio streams, which features over 30,000 stations. It’s not the most extensive catalogue in terms of local radio stations (many are online stations), but there is a free Shoutcast app in case you want to see what’s available before you buy.

For its visual design, the app takes a retro approach, featuring a wood theme, old-school dial clock face, and knobs. But the knobs aren’t turned, but rather tapped, to switch them on or off.

The main screen of the app packs in a lot of info and functionality, maybe too much, as a bigger clock face would be nice (some of us have poor eyesight). Besides the clock face, shown are the year, month, day, and day of the week. There are the aforementioned 3 knobs for alarm, radio, and sleep, and also 2 dials for volume or screen brightness. Toward the bottom is a display for the current radio station/mp3/sound and a button to access the app’s settings.

In a thoughtful design touch, the app also has a Power button on the main screen that completely shuts down the app, meaning it will no longer run in the background. We enjoyed this feature, as it means you won’t have to go through the iPhone’s laborious process for truly shutting down apps, where you double click, hold your finger down on the app’s icon, etc.

The app has a few other interesting features, including the ability to record your own sound to wake up to within the app (which could lead to a few good practical jokes), vibrate for alarms just in case you have the sound turned off, and a shake-to-snooze option for when you’re too groggy to operate the iPhone.

Conclusion

Radio Alarm ($1.99) is a beautifully design app that can run in the background and wake you up to your favorite radio station or iPod music. The app is chock full of features to explore and nice little touches that show a lot of thought has gone into the app. We like it so much, it earns a spot on our Best of iPhone Apps list.

Radio Alarm Clock is a $1.99 download from the iTunes App Store.

WakeMate is an upcoming accessory for the iPhone that aims to improve your quality of sleep by waking you up at the precise right moment. Supposedly, everyone has an optimal waking moment that occurs every 20 minutes or so after a good night’s sleep. The WakeMate is a small bluetooth band you wear around your wrist and contains accelerometers that track your movement during sleep. The monitoring of such sleep movement is known as actigraphy. Actigraphy in the past has been used as a cost-effective way to assess sleep disorders.

The WakeMate wristband will work in conjunction with an upcoming iPhone app that will allow you to set the alarm for a 20-minute period and wake you at your lightest stage of sleep within that interval. The wristband triggers the alarm on your iPhone, waking you up. This means it gets you up at the least traumatic time, and hopefully stops you from feeling foul all morning.

Not only that, but it tracks and graphs your sleep cycles, so you can analyze your rest patterns, and make sure you’re sleeping enough. It’s available for preorder, with an overall sticker price of $50. Apparently, it can also work with any bluetooth enabled phone, so even if you don’t have an iPhone you could find some use for it.

[WakeMate via Gizmodo]

Rise&Shine (iTunes link) is an excellent free clock app for the iPhone. It’s the only free clock I’ve seen that shows you the weather too. There’s no need to enter in a zip code–the app uses the iPhone’s GPS to pull down local weather.

The app has three visual themes: reflection, flip clock, and digital. It has both a portrait and landscape orientation view.

The current temperature is displayed in the bottom left corner along with a graphic symbolizing current conditions and the day’s forecasted hi/lo temps. Tapping the weather brings up an extended forecast. Unfortunately, the app doesn’t have an alarm clock feature.

Rise&Shine is a free download in the iTunes App Store.