Why iPhone only lets you snooze for nine minutes

EVER wondered why your iPhone only lets you snooze for nine minutes? It has nothing to do with sleep patterns but rather the history of clocks.

There is a reason why Apple’s snooze feature only lets you doze for nine minutes. Picture: Supplied

JUST one more minute …

It would make all the difference to some of us in the morning — but nope, Apple iPhone users are allocated just nine minutes of snooze time (unless you press it twice, that is).

But why nine?

Unsurprisingly it isn’t just a number Apple randomly plucked out of the air.

It doesn’t even have anything to do with our sleep pattern.

The Sun reports that the reason the snooze facility on our phones is automatically set at nine minutes is actually down to Apple paying homage to the history of clocks.

According to a post on Q&A website Quora, nine minutes has been the alarm clock industry standard “forever”.

Nic Lake wrote: “Early clocks and watches had gears that made it difficult to set a snooze for *exactly* 10 minutes.

“So they aimed for *less than* 10 minutes, aka nine minutes. Was a pretty standard thing till the 50s.

“Then, when digital clocks came about, it was much easier to code in a nine minute snooze.

“All they had to do was take the last digit of the previous alarm (say, five), subtract one (now four), and set the new alarm to go off the next time that number came up. So, 6:45 to 6:54, and so on.”

So, Nic’s theory suggests Apple is continuing the tradition.

But another Quora user, David J Slavik, reckons it was the invention of the hybrid-electric clocks with rollover flip display which prompted the nine minute snooze.

“For this reason the physical interface for the snooze function had to be put on the minute column so that each flip of the card that was displayed when the snooze button was pressed would re-trigger the alarm,” he said. “Putting it anywhere else would have resulted in an inordinately long snooze.”

Another plausible theory.

Or maybe it’s down to some bod at Apple thinking nine minutes is the optimum time to regain consciousness and build up the strength to get out of bed.

What do you think?

This article originally appeared in The Sun

Originally published as Why iPhone only lets you snooze for nine minutes