Sprint's clocks are 15 seconds fast...

[swg0101]

I noticed that the Sprint towers are basing their times off GPS rather than UTC, which does not take into account the 15 leap seconds that was put into place.
Because I use all atomic clocks in my house, and the same for alarm clocks, my Optimus S sound to always sound the alarm 15 seconds early than my other alarms.

I tried to use ClockSync to sync my Android clock back to UTC time, but it seems like the network time keeps changing it back the way it was after 15-20 seconds later.

I cannot find an option in Android that lets me disable Automatic network clock update - anyone has any suggestions?

Thanks

 

[trekkie1701c]

If you feel like rooting and installing a custom rom, I believe the Cyanogen port that we have allows you to manually set the system time and disable auto-updates. Other than that, I don't think there's a way in the stock/stock-based ROMs to disable to auto update (or at least I've never found one)

 

[swg0101]

I have nROM now - that's why I can run ClockSync with Root.
Just couldn't find a place to disable network time update...

 

[jmb1317]

I noticed that the Sprint towers are basing their times off GPS rather than UTC, which does not take into account the 15 leap seconds that was put into place.
Because I use all atomic clocks in my house, and the same for alarm clocks, my Optimus S sound to always sound the alarm 15 seconds early than my other alarms.

I tried to use ClockSync to sync my Android clock back to UTC time, but it seems like the network time keeps changing it back the way it was after 15-20 seconds later.

I cannot find an option in Android that lets me disable Automatic network clock update - anyone has any suggestions?

Thanks

seriously!

 

[cquarksnow]

I saw your post before registering in Android Central, and then once I registered to reply, I would not see the post anymore, just searching for the word utc
I had to use google to search androidcentral.com to find the post again.

First, let me say that Sprint's clocks are not 15 seconds fast. Most of the non-Android phones that get broadcast time from Sprint are utc-referenced.
However, the only Sprint Android phone that shows utc-referenced time is the Samsung Epic.

This is Android bug 5485, not fixed in 2.3.3 , as it's not a priority for Google
I updated Wikipedia :
HTC Evo 4G - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
and tryo to overcome the issue without rooting my EVO 4G ; I tried to set the time manually in the subway, where I had no reception, and since Android only lets you set hours and minutes, I set the minute at UTC nn:nn:00, meaning when UTC time was 0 second past the minute.
It kept fine until I exited the subway, and then the broadcast signal came again moving the seconds up by 15.
Note that Sprint broadcast signal contains UTC, GPS and UTC offset, and it looks like Google did not have enough money to afford a competent engineer who understands that most people, unlike astronomers, need UTC, not GPS.
Since 15 leap seconds were introduced since 1980, when GPS was incepted, UTC is now slower. I believe the Samsung Epic firmware might be overriding the device clock to look at the proper time value in the broadcast time, yet it might be then an issue if Google finds the money or motivation to fix the problem. This is to me the main fragmentation issue, and I wonder if a pilot, used to accurate Sprint time might sue Google because relying on a new Android phone's time and crashing a plane will look into a class-action suit.

Anyhow this probably will make Apple and Microsoft happy for the moment, and whoever else is exploiting this bug for stock trading, but I will not be too specific....

As you can read , Sprint, HTC, Google, and goodandevo.net (who suppressed the post) were made aware last autumn.

 

[NicksOptimus]

No wonder I was arriving early everywhere.