What time is it?

I have 3 cell phones, and one of them is an hour early. AFAIK it is impossible to reset these damn things.

That is possible, despite the fact they were bought "new" in Portland or in Olympia and have corresponding area codes. TracFone has this irritating habit of refurbishing used phones and packaging them as new.

Do i need to find that piece of paper where i wrote down the time?

AFAIK cellphones grab the local time from the local cell tower... my Verizon phone always knows the correct local time. ...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson | mens | | Analog Innovations | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

If you carry all three cell phones, a two out of three majority logic decision should be sufficient to determine the correct time.

Cell phones get their time from the cell site which is very accurate. Some cell phones have provisions for setting different time zones, and setting the date on which to switch from standard time, to DST (daylight savings time). Both of these should be available somewhere in the settings of your unspecified model cell phone.

Actually, it's quite easy to reset a cell phone or smart phone to defaults if you know the phones pass code (usually the last 4 digits of the phone number). I always reset and clear phones when reselling a used phone. However, I don't think you'll need to do that as the time settings should be user settable.

Note that DST is NOT observed in Arizona, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, and Northern Mariana Islands. The Navajo Nation does observe DST in Arizona due to their territory being distributed over 3 different states.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Try living close to a time zone boundary. Depending on which tower it decides to connect to, it might show the correct time. Might not.

And the Hopi reservation, which is within the bounds of the Navajo res does not do DST. So you can drive from no DST, to DST to no DST all in about 1 hour driving time

--
Chisolm 
Republic of Texas

Deja vu. I have an ancient Samsung SPH-i700 smartphone which I use solely to play Solitare. To save battery power, the cell phone section is turned off. This morning, the clock read 1 hr early. Since the cell phone section is off, the time was not set by Verizon, and is apparently hard coded into the firmware. Since the phone was made before 2007, when the DST rules were changed by congress, it's still on the old system, which changes back to standard time on the last Sunday of October.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

I hate to tell you, but if you write down the time it is only good for 1 minute per day. Well, two minutes per day if you don't indicate AM or PM. Otherwise people would have used tattoos instead of wrist watched.

Doesn't a cell phone get the time zone info from the cell tower? Seems unmanageable otherwise.

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Rick

I have pay by the minute phones from Net10 and only use one as a cell phone with service. If you do anything to disturb the clock, like take the battery out, it comes up with a random time and there is no way to set it. Yet, I can still make a 911 call with it. So obviously it "sees" the tower still. It just doesn't update the time from it.

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Rick

I'm on VZW (Verizon). Net10 uses AT&T. There is a difference.

On my Samsung phone, I'm fairly sure that VZW does NOT update the phone when in flight mode. That's because when running in flight mode, the internal clock does drift around and can easily be off a few minutes after about a week. There's no way to reset it it manually, so I just turn off the flight mode, wait for the clock to change, and turn it off again so I can play solitaire. Also, I've tried calling

611 (repair service) from an unactivated VZW phone. That works, but not in flight mode which literally turns off the radio.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Yes. As you tavel between time zones, the cell phone is suppose to update the phone to local time, which includes DST (daylight saving time). Of course, accuracy doesn't matter if the smart phone isn't too smart about handling the time: or can't deal with the difference between UTC and GPS time:

Ah, midnight. Time to give up and get some sleep.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

You are mistaken. Net10 uses T-Mobile where it is available or if you are in a T-Mobile black hole like I am you get a Verizon phone like I have. But my other phones are T-Mobile I expect. When I called about my phone not working for 15 miles from one of my houses they sent me a low end Verizon phone for free.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say with this. Also, I expect you have a smart phone. My phone is... well, a phone.

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Rick

Sorry. I searched for the info and most of what appeared said AT&T.

That was nice of them.

Oops. That should say: turn it "on" again so I can play solitaire.

The Samsung SPH-i700 is an ancient smartphone. Any phone where I can play solitaire is a smart phone. The others are either dumb phones or feature phones.

What I was mumbling is that I'm certain that VZW does not update the clock on the phone when in flight mode, which turns off the radio. However, a phone that is NOT activated, but is NOT in flight mode, will be updated.

My favored CDMA cell phone is an equally ancient LG VX-8300: on PagePlus Cellular at 5 cents/minute. My total monthly bill is about $15. I also drag around a Motorola Droid X2, but don't use the cell phone section. Mostly it's used as a camera, appointment organizer, and Wi-Fi sniffer:

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

I don't know what type of phones are used for ATT or sprint. I believe my T-mobile phones are GSM, but I guess I don't really know that for sure. The Verizon phone I know is CDMA, so they have their own phones unless you have a multi-mode phone which I used to read about, but not so much anymore. So either they are not so popular or they are *all* multi-mode other than the cheapies.

I just know Tracphone/Net10 (same company and networks) have two coverage maps. One does not cover this area at all and the other is Verizon that covers the area very poorly. My roommate's iPhone is with ATT and he seems to have little trouble around here, so clearly my other phones are not on ATT.

Ok, but my phones with expired service do not update the time while they can still be used for 911 calls. They show the presence of the network on the bar graph. The time just goes wonky though.

Do they have a monthly fee? $0.05 a minute is pretty good. My plan has no monthly charge, but the minutes expire after some time period, both minutes and days roll over and I currently have over two years of days. So at this point I only worry about the cost per minute.

The voice quality if pretty poor with Net10. Sometimes it is so bad I can't understand. I'm guessing Net10 buys minutes in blocks and Verizon just sells minutes without regard to bit rate. So Verizon customers are given first priority for bit rate and Net10 customers get what is left, lol. Sometimes I would swear I was talking over LPC-10.

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Rick

All of the phones were bought on the west coast (OR, WA) and have been in one or the other state since then. I can set them side-by-side and always see that time difference, day or night. So the "local" time theory is closer to loco time.. ((darn! cannot find that piece of paper with the time written down!))

• "should be"? Less than zero clues. All TrakFones. #1: LG800G Guam, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, and Northern Mariana Islands. The

Ain't none within many hundreds of miles of Olympia WA.

Is that before or after the second full moon before turkey day?

That paper is more reliable...