Time drift issues?

[anon(871557)]

I bought my S3 the day it was released, first one into the AT&T store. I like it a whole lot, but it has issues keeping time. If I let it sync to the AT&T tower it's 22 minutes off, exactly. If I set it to manual it loses time, but it's not consistent with how it loses time. With a full battery or on the charger it loses a minute every hour. If the battery is below somewhere around 70% it loses a minute every 15 minutes.

I noticed this when my text messages started sorting themselves out of order.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

 

[mrsimps]

I have not experienced this. I've only had my Sprint GS3 a bit over week.

 

[anon(871557)]

I appreciate the reply. I haven't seen any posts on these forums that indicate it's characteristic of the device, and googling doesn't turn anything up. I guess I need to return to the store and see if AT&T will exchange it.

 

[Major]

Have you tried a hard reset?

 

[anon(871557)]

After a few days of it making me crazy I rooted it so that I could use ClockSync. Then I restored it to factory spec so that I could bring it over to AT&T, who told me that all Samsung S3 have the problem and it's up to Samsung to release a fix for it. I didn't argue, I just left. When I got home I rooted it again. I'm assuming that a hard reset was done a few times in this process, yet if I turn off ClockSync it still will not keep time.

TLDR version. Yes, I believe so.

Thank you for helping me. I love this phone but the inability for it to keep time is a serious flaw. I'm working around it with ClockSYnc, but that's one more thing sucking up battery life every 15 minutes.

 

[daelic]

You are not alone.

My wife & I both have this problem with our S3's. We have to restart our phones at least once a day to force a time sync with AT&T's ntp server, otherwise it never does and drifts.

Thankfully, the S3 restarts pretty dang fast, so it's only a minor annoyance.

 

[anon(871557)]

Thanks for that confirmation. My googling around hasn't found any other mention of the issue.

Rather than rebooting your phones over and over you could download CloudSync from the Play store. If you don't want to root your phone you can run it in CloudSync in rootless mode which will help you keep it in time without rebooting. Just tap it and it'll put an overlay on the screen showing you the correct time. If you do that while you're on the time settings screen you can see how much time to add. Might be faster than rebooting the phone.

In rooted mode it works automatically for you. My phone still doesn't keep time on its own, but as I'm running CloudSync rooted I never have to worry about it anymore.

 

[coolguytoo]

I use ClockSync from the app store, works great! You need to be rooted for auto sync but even the manual unrooted option is really quick. You can put it in your notifications bar and tap it from there every so often to sync.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Android Central Forums

 

[D16RR]

Never touched the sync settings, never had an issue with time keeping. Wouldn't a bug that Samsung needs to fix affect all phones?

 

[anon(871557)]

That's the point I was trying to make at the AT+T store, but they told me that they had heard the complaint frequently and that Samsung was going to issue a software update, which led me to come here and ask about it.

I'd say that it doesn't seem to be "frequent" because googling the issue only turns up this thread. I think I'll be waiting a long time for Samsung in that case.

 

[D16RR]

ATT says the phone is broken, but they won't help because some other people have the same defect? What kind of crap is that?

 

[anon(871557)]

More accurately they say that it is a defect that Samsung has to issue a software fix for. Moreover, I do not know if this is an official AT&T position or the person working in the store's answer.

 

[Althea Esgana]

My galaxy s3 also got the same problem, my time doesn't work properly. I broke my back case due to trying to fix it by pulling battery out and reinsert again but still doesn't work. Im from philippines. I also do reprogrammi g my s3 via odin but still no progress with my clock problem

 

[Jadesword1]

Hello! I purchased the Galaxy S3 three weeks ago on Sprint, and I am recently having this problem as well. The time stopped at 12:10 and didn't budge for 47 minutes (12:57) so I had to reset it, only for the same thing to happen again minutes later. I don't know if it has anything to do with it, but this problem only happened when I set up a repeating alarm. I turned it back off and (so far) haven't had it happen again.

Edit: It is now 6:52 and I check my phone to realize it says 6:10, and it is now actually changing instead of just freezing. I think I just figured it out, I was watching my phone and realized I have 4G signal. As soon as I lose it and it goes back to 3G, my clock goes back to the correct time. I believe they have the wrong time being sent out over the network through 4G.

 

[Soul Luvable]

I am with Sprint and I've had the Galaxy S3 since it came on the market. I didn't experience this problem until the software updated to jellybean. I've called Sprint several times with this issue and the response is nil. I've done a hard reset, but to no avail. Sprint's tech support suggested that I do a network reset ##72 78 6# and that didn't work either. I've even tried taking it off the network sync just to see if the phone would keep time from the internal clock, and no luck. The time and the date will not keep, this also disrupts the text message order also. :'(

 

[LifeofFitz]

I downloaded ClockQ premium and it sometimes corrects the time but not always. (At least I have a better clock now.) Instead of restarting your phone to correct the time, a quick fix is to go to system updates under settings and update your PRL. It fixes the time in seconds. This is very annoying and Samsung needs to find the fix soon. I've been late for a meeting thanks to my clock suddenly losing time. This shouldn't be this complicated.

 

[meyerweb#CB]

After a few days of it making me crazy I rooted it so that I could use ClockSync. Then I restored it to factory spec so that I could bring it over to AT&T, who told me that all Samsung S3 have the problem and it's up to Samsung to release a fix for it. I didn't argue, I just left. When I got home I rooted it again. I'm assuming that a hard reset was done a few times in this process, yet if I turn off ClockSync it still will not keep time.

TLDR version. Yes, I believe so.

Thank you for helping me. I love this phone but the inability for it to keep time is a serious flaw. I'm working around it with ClockSYnc, but that's one more thing sucking up battery life every 15 minutes.

AT&T lies. S3s on other carriers keep time, so I strongly suspect the problem is with the carrier's customizations, not the phone itself. That's what happens when the carrier screws with Samsung's code.

 

[Adriane Lippian]

My note 2 started this time loosing thing 3 days ago have you found a solution?
The AT&T was not help and the only way to know what time it is is for me to restart it. Mine is not the att version its the straight samsung

 

[jeffjohnvol]

I bought my S3 the day it was released, first one into the AT&T store. I like it a whole lot, but it has issues keeping time. If I let it sync to the AT&T tower it's 22 minutes off, exactly. If I set it to manual it loses time, but it's not consistent with how it loses time. With a full battery or on the charger it loses a minute every hour. If the battery is below somewhere around 70% it loses a minute every 15 minutes.

I noticed this when my text messages started sorting themselves out of order.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

I had this issue and finally figured out what it was. When I stay at a hotel each week (for my job), my wi-fi was trying to connect to their free wi-fi that I had set up prior. The hotel resets every 24 hours having you pull up to the "accept our conditions" page. So my wi-fi was essentially on hold overnight (if I didn't manually connect) so I didn't get any network activity, including time sync. So, once I left wi-fi off, or "forgot that network" my time has been working fine.

 

[Sailindawg]

@OP

How is your phone set up?
Go to Settings/More/Date&Time

Is the first box selected, Automatically set to network time?

After updating I had to manually reset this. Also, is your time zone correct. After updating I had to reset that as well.