A minor bug with date and time feature.

[Skamath]

Recently day light savings change occurred in Aus and clocks went forward 1 hour. In my date and time settings I have automatic option set for set date and time and for timezone.
I set an alarm for 1.58 am as the clocks change over at 2 and as this is in update 1 DP anything can happen.
I woke up at 1.58 and at 2.00 am the clock changed to 3 like it was supposed to, so I went back to bed and woke up the normal time and pissed off to work. Just when I got to work I checked some messages opened up instagram and emails. A while later I see my colleague and I asked him in a surprised tone as to why he was here early. He pointed out that it was the right time and my mobile had lost the change which had occurred earlier.

I look up the settings again and in the timezone option the timezone is set to Brisbane which is GMT +10 and I am in GST+11 in Melbourne including the day light savings change. when I changed the region to manual and set it to Melbourne it switched back to right time.

If it follows my location which is set to on at all times, why is it setting my region to Brisbane when the GPS would say it loud and clear that I am in Melbourne?

frequent travellers across time zones beware

anybody with similar issue or a solution?
Cheers

 

[Suicide Stacey]

Automatic time updates never worked here in the UK for me personally. I just manually set it and leave it at that

 

[Skamath]

Automatic time updates never worked here in the UK for me personally. I just manually set it and leave it at that

and the opposite is true with me. It is the auto zone set that didnt work for me.

 

[Entegy]

Auto-set time never worked for Suicide Stacey because UK carriers refuse to implement NITZ. Being a one time-zone country, they don't believe it provides value to their customers, forgetting people travel, especially in Europe and open borders, or that people would dislike clocks that drift.

As for the Aussie... Your carrier had a glitch in the time zone change. It happens. When you're connected to a carrier that supports NITZ, NITZ is used over NTP, and sometimes carriers **** up around daylight savings time. It used to happen to me all the time on many different phone models. If you want, manually set the time zone to Melbourne, then turn auto-set time back on.

 

[Skamath]

Auto-set time never worked for Suicide Stacey because UK carriers refuse to implement NITZ. Being a one time-zone country, they don't believe it provides value to their customers, forgetting people travel, especially in Europe and open borders, or that people would dislike clocks that drift.

As for the Aussie... Your carrier had a glitch in the time zone change. It happens. When you're connected to a carrier that supports NITZ, NITZ is used over NTP, and sometimes carriers **** up around daylight savings time. It used to happen to me all the time on many different phone models. If you want, manually set the time zone to Melbourne, then turn auto-set time back on.

Something new for me to learn. What is NITZ and NTP (TZ time zone?)

what you said is right. Manually set timezone and auto set time. LIke the phone knows that it is DST in melbourne but doesnt really know it is in melbourne

 

[Entegy]

NITZ is an optional protocol of GSM mobile towers that can give phones the time zone, time, and date. Apparently, giving time can be wonky, but it's very good at giving the right time zone at least. Carriers in large countries such as Canada, the United States of America, and Australia have it implemented since their citizens can move between 5+ time zones without ever leaving their home country. I can't comment on who has it implemented in other countries in Europe and Asia, but I know the UK refuses to implement it due to high costs. As a result, phones that rely solely on NITZ to get accurate time will drift and not update time zones when entering the UK, say by air for example.

NTP (Network Time Protocol) is another time syncing protocol. NITZ and NTP exist because NTP can't work like NITZ can. NTP requires a data connection to a time server, which was improbable on 80s/90s cell phones. NTP is what computers use to sync time. For example, by default Windows syncs to Microsoft's time server, time.windows.com. Personally, my computers sync with the Canadian atomic clock, time.nrc.ca.

So with that out of the way, here's the mess: Prior to WP8.1 Update 1, Windows Phone ONLY had NITZ support and not NTP. So in a country like the UK, your phone's time would drift because there was nothing keeping it in sync. Microsoft finally added NTP support to WP in WP8.1 U1. So, in Update 1, if your phone has a data connection, and is on a network that does not support NITZ, Windows Phone will use NTP to sync the time.

BUUUUUUUUT

We have yet another caveat. For some reason, NTP support is turned off by default in Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1! Your phone's manufacturer or carrier must turn on NTP support in their customization options for you to get NTP support. So, in the Dev Preview, even if you meet all the requirements I mentioned above to sync time, you likely STILL won't have syncing time via NTP because Microsoft picked a bad default! They're aware of this though, and perhaps in a future update, the default will change to on and this time syncing madness will be behind us.

 

[Blackadder_100]

Ah, so that explains why I had to manually reset my time zone when returning to the UK from Greece. Thank you very much Entegy for such an eloquent explanation!

 

[Darren Walsh]

NITZ is an optional protocol of GSM mobile towers that can give phones the time zone, time, and date. Apparently, giving time can be wonky, but it's very good at giving the right time zone at least. Carriers in large countries such as Canada, the United States of America, and Australia have it implemented since their citizens can move between 5+ time zones without ever leaving their home country. I can't comment on who has it implemented in other countries in Europe and Asia, but I know the UK refuses to implement it due to high costs. As a result, phones that rely solely on NITZ to get accurate time will drift and not update time zones when entering the UK, say by air for example.

NTP (Network Time Protocol) is another time syncing protocol. NITZ and NTP exist because NTP can't work like NITZ can. NTP requires a data connection to a time server, which was improbable on 80s/90s cell phones. NTP is what computers use to sync time. For example, by default Windows syncs to Microsoft's time server, time.windows.com. Personally, my computers sync with the Canadian atomic clock, time.nrc.ca.

So with that out of the way, here's the mess: Prior to WP8.1 Update 1, Windows Phone ONLY had NITZ support and not NTP. So in a country like the UK, your phone's time would drift because there was nothing keeping it in sync. Microsoft finally added NTP support to WP in WP8.1 U1. So, in Update 1, if your phone has a data connection, and is on a network that does not support NITZ, Windows Phone will use NTP to sync the time.

BUUUUUUUUT

We have yet another caveat. For some reason, NTP support is turned off by default in Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1! Your phone's manufacturer or carrier must turn on NTP support in their customization options for you to get NTP support. So, in the Dev Preview, even if you meet all the requirements I mentioned above to sync time, you likely STILL won't have syncing time via NTP because Microsoft picked a bad default! They're aware of this though, and perhaps in a future update, the default will change to on and this time syncing madness will be behind us.

I know what you mean , I'm from Ireland but it has started working here the last 2weeks or so, I'm on official update 1 on my 930, I have soft rest many times and the date and time now always syncs within seconds

 

[Skamath]

Just a recent check on the auto time zone IT stayed on the melbourne time. DO you think the "critical" update that came out recently fixed it? still on DP though

 

[Entegy]

Nope. As posted on the official WP forums, the update was Microsoft doing some testing of their update systems. There was no benefit to the end user in this update.

 

[alb3530]

and the opposite is true with me. It is the auto zone set that didnt work for me.

I had a similar problem here in Brazil. Daylight savings happened some days ago, the clock went one hour forward (with a little bit of delay, but it went) and I was happy.Yesterday, I went to bed by 3:30 am (saw the time in the PC, then it was right), and enabled one of the weekend-only alarms to wake me up at 01:20 PM.The phone then woke me up at 01:20 PM, and my mom told me it was already 02:20 PM.I enabled Wi-Fi, and went to date+time settings, and time zone appeared as -3 Greenland, and then automatically it quickly turned itself into -3 Brasilia (right time zone, that was normally set) and time went one hour forward, being then correct. Time zone and date both have been always set set to automatic.... Now, I've set both to manual...

Best regards

 

[Skamath]

On a slightly different tangent has anyone experienced anything strange with their alarms.
I have couple set for sunday and a couple set for 4 week days. The sunday ones for some reason doesn't go off. It has happened to me 3 weeks in a row not nearly causing me to be late for work( luckily the internal clock woke me up just in time
The weekday ones are just fine. The 2 differences between them are the sunday one is an hour early than the weekdays and the alarm haven't been renamed like the weekdays alarm.