Clock and widgets display wrong time?

JihadJoe

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This is so weird - anyone else having a problem like this?

Every once in awhile, my phone will display the incorrect time. Just now, at 4:44, my phone was showing 3:28 and my accuweather widget was showing 3:52. A restart fixed the problem on both.

Is it just me? Is an app causing my phone to run slower?

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Russ Griffin

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my s3 does this every now n then. my evo did the same thing which makes me think it is a tower issue. now I just leave the automatic date and time unchecked
 

Iggymart

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I noticed this yesterday on my Samsung Galaxy Victory, which runs on Sprint Network (Virgin).

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meyerweb#CB

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I haven't seen this on mine. Tower and network issues could cause the device to show the wrong time, but wouldn't make the phone and widget show different times. If the widget and phone continue to show differences, I'd delete the widget and reapply it. If the phone continues to show incorrect times, is there anyone else around you who's also on Sprint who's phone you could check? If it's a network issue, it should affect anyone on the same tower.
 

Golfdriver97

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This is so weird - anyone else having a problem like this?

Every once in awhile, my phone will display the incorrect time. Just now, at 4:44, my phone was showing 3:28 and my accuweather widget was showing 3:52. A restart fixed the problem on both.

Is it just me? Is an app causing my phone to run slower?

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Android Central Forums

You can also try enabling airplane mode for a few seconds, and then turning it off. That cuts the cell signal off and then when you disable airplane mode, the cell will automatically search for towers, and then display the correct time. Are you running a lot of widgets? You can try downloading Watchdog, that will monitor and point out any rouge apps you may have.
 

Nate Borman

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I just got the Victory for virgin mobile and it does it at least once a day. And by 5 hours. I used to use my phone as my alarm, but then my clock would skip ahead overnight and I'd have no alarm. I even set it to Manual time once, it STILL jumped ahead.
 

oskar1995

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I've actually seen something simliar. I live in the Central Jersey area and my Beautiful Widgets home screen widget has been different (by 6-8 hours) when I'm home. This coincides with heavy periods of roaming at my house that is the hopefully the result of a tower being updated, but likely just an issue with a tower. When I leave that area (like at work right now) I see the correct time.

The odd thing is that the time at the top (and the home screen) are still correct. I believe that is the phone recognizing from the GPS (and Google now) that it hasn't left that time zone and to not change.
 

CosmicMiami

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I've noticed this the past few mornings. It occurs sometime between 5:55 AM (EDT) and 6:20 AM (EDT). My alarm is set for 5:55. When I'm on my way to work, I notice the time is one hour early, 5:25 AM. This morning I noticed about 6:50 AM or so it had reverted back to the actual time.
 

jamieguitar

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This is the best advice! I have been having the same issue intermittently for the past couple of weeks. Airplane mode on/off does the job and fixes the clock, setting it to the right time. I wish there was a good fix for the issue though. I would rather not leave the automatic date and time unchecked.
I put this response in the wrong place - meant to be a reply to Golfdriver. Thanks Golfdriver!
 

Golfdriver97

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This is the best advice! I have been having the same issue intermittently for the past couple of weeks. Airplane mode on/off does the job and fixes the clock, setting it to the right time. I wish there was a good fix for the issue though. I would rather not leave the automatic date and time unchecked.
I put this response in the wrong place - meant to be a reply to Golfdriver. Thanks Golfdriver!

Hey, no sweat. Glad that idea helped. If you have a Sprint device, try going into Settings>Update> and then update your PRL and maybe the profile. That may help some connectivity issues.
 

G_The_One

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I've actually seen something simliar. I live in the Central Jersey area and my Beautiful Widgets home screen widget has been different (by 6-8 hours) when I'm home. This coincides with heavy periods of roaming at my house that is the hopefully the result of a tower being updated, but likely just an issue with a tower. When I leave that area (like at work right now) I see the correct time.

The odd thing is that the time at the top (and the home screen) are still correct. I believe that is the phone recognizing from the GPS (and Google now) that it hasn't left that time zone and to not change.

If you haven't resolved this I came across something that might be useful, especially on Beautiful Widgets. If you open Beautiful Widgets and go to Widget Configuration, there is an option under Widget Settings which says "Use Local Time" and toggling this between "On" and "Off" affects how the widget displays the time. In the "Off" position it seems to use the system time of the device which should help solve your problem.
 

Kayla Drake

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I just purchased a virgin mobile phone and service. My phone has been showing the wrong time for a week, however the weather widget is correct. I spent hours on the phone with company, and the only answer I was provided with was to wait 3 days and call back.
 

Ben Lemon

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Hi,

my wife just got a new Samsung Galaxy S3 on 4g in Australia.


The phone skips forward time very rapidly on both manual clock settings and also auto time settings.

If it is set to auto a restart realigns the clock, but it just starts keeping time fast again and within 30 minutes it is 15 minutes fast.

I have compelted hard resets, reset to factory defaults and have the latest updates to the OS, with no success

Can anyone help I want a permenant fix to this not simply restarting the phone or going into plane mode every 10 minutes to get the clock right. The clock should keep time without any manual intervention from a human.

Thanks

Ben
 

annapajama

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Thanks airplane mode worked! I'm glad it was not anything more complicated or I doubt I could have fixed it. Very grateful. Did not want to call T mobile. No matter what they try to sell me a new phone.
 

JRb64

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my s3 does this every now n then. my evo did the same thing which makes me think it is a tower issue. now I just leave the automatic date and time unchecked

Turn off your WiFi then toggle off Auto date/ time & Auto location.Restart phone then toggle back on the above Auto settings. Your time should be showing correctly.Turn WiFi back on. IT'S ALL GGOD!
 
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pro10is

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There may be several variations of this issue but I believe it mostly occurs because the internal clock on some S3's simply do not keep time well. If the time updates regularly then the problem is hardly noticeable. However if the interval between time updates is longer than the internal clock error you will notice a time variation until the next update occurs. This could be just a few minutes per day or if your internal clock is really having problems, even more. In normal use I do not believe the time updates by itself more than once a day, if that. And since there are so many phones out there now I further believe the factory software setting for the time correction interval is getting longer with every OS update to cut back on overall user bandwidth which is why more people are now noticing time fluctuations on their phones.

So what to do? You can force a time update by resetting the phone everyday or by turning Airplane mode on and then off. This provides a temporary fix but if a smart phone tells time so poorly that it has to be reset each day that's hardly a fix. Imagine having to reset your watch everyday. If your S3 is still under warranty insist that it be fixed or replaced as I believe the core issue is a hardware malfunction with the time circuitry. If it's not under warranty then the only free fix would be to find a way to have the phone update the time more frequently by itself. I don't believe there is a way to do this via any user settings. Instead you would need to download a clock synchronizing app such as ClockSync. This would resolve the problem but unfortunately in order for the app to automatically get access to the time setting you'll need to root the phone. This is not rocket science but it's not that easy either and many people can't or won't root their phone for a variety of reasons.

It's possible Android or your carrier might someday provide a fix by allowing the interval between time settings to be adjustable but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for this fix because I don't believe the problem is widespread enough for them to bother, and then there's the bandwidth issue. I really hope I'm wrong about that because so much relies on having an accurate clock, from meetings to alarms to messages, and a smart phone that can't tell time is not so smart.

If you want this problem to be addressed you'll need to make some noise about it. Best of luck.
 
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ilsebender

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open your ram booster, i have no idea how to do that? I have a samsung galaxy S3. I'd really like to fix this problem!!! Hope you can help me? Thanks!
 

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