I’ll be the first to admit it, I have an over-reliance on technology. There are some things I don’t carry around with me simply because they’ve all been replaced by some gadget or other.

On a recent trip to Juba I had a stop-over in Cairo. The airline had put me up in a nice hotel just outside the airport and I was all booked and checked-in on the flight out to Juba the next morning. The problem was I needed to be up nice and early, with enough time to get some breakfast, check-out and be back at the airport for 7.30am.

When you’re at home this is no problem as I suspect most of us have a dedicated alarm clock on our bedside table. When you’re travelling you obviously don’t pack everything and technology can be fantastic when you need to economise. Devices such as your mobile phone can do many tasks that remove the necessity of carrying extra items in your luggage; an alarm clock being one of them.

So, having been presented with this need to get up rather early I set about finding something that would act as an alarm clock. My Windows Phone would do this task nicely but it was almost out of power. Getting it charged up would be the first port of call. Simple really, whip out a plug adapter, add a micro USB cable and set it charging. Then, set the alarm and off I go.

Now, I don’t know about you but if I have a very important reason to wake up at a specific time (like catching an airplane) then I like to have a secondary alarm just in case the first one fails. Easy I thought, I’ll arrange a wake-up call from the hotel as well. At least I would have done if the telephone in the room worked. So, no wake-up call. What else do I own that could act as an alarm. My iPad? Nope, I could download an app that would do that but with no wi-fi connection in the hotel that was going to be near-on impossible. How about the iPod? Well, that was out of charge and I forgot to bring my Apple USB cable with me. How about the PS Vita? Okay, so I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel here. Alas, I had to rely on the phone and only the phone.

Thankfully it didn’t let me down – I even woke up a few minutes before the alarm so it kind of wasn’t needed but who knows. Had there been a power cut early on in the night then the phone would have drained its battery, or it could have crashed and not fired the alarm, or the software might have had a bug in it which could have caused it not to fire.

As I was leaving the room I heard a ringing sound coming from the bathroom. It turns out there was a phone in there. The call? A nice lady was reminding me to wake up, as I had a flight to catch!