iPhone Clock Problem: Phone Bungles Time Change, Say Users

NEW YORK — It's hard enough to get your bearings when the time changes twice a year. It's all but impossible when your phone starts playing tricks on you, too.

Users of Apple's iPhone peppered Twitter and blogs with complaints Sunday when their phones bungled the one-hour "spring forward" to daylight savings time that went into effect overnight Saturday.

One user complained of missing church, another of almost missing yoga. One called her iPhone stupid and several just asked for help.

It turns out some users' phones fell back one hour instead of springing forward, making the time displayed on the iPhone two hours off.

This is just the latest clock woe for Apple's chic iPhone. A clock glitch prevented alarms from sounding on New Year's Day, causing slumbering revelers to oversleep. The devices also struggled to adjust to the end of daylight savings time back in November.

The glitch affected iPhone owners who subscribe for phone service through both AT&T and Verizon.

Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Twitter was abuzz with a simple solution: Either shut down and restart the phone, or switch the phone to "airplane mode" and then back.

Apple has sold more than 100 million iPhones since they were first offered in 2007, dazzling customers with features that allow users to watch movies, play games, surf the Internet and get driving directions on a small, sleek device.

That these paragons of high tech have had trouble telling time led to dripping sarcasm Sunday, even from owners who didn't suffer any problems. One whose clock adjusted just fine called the iPhone revolutionary.

Comments

[doctorwww]

02:18 AM on 03/19/2011

NEVER HAVE HAD GLITCH ONE IN USING IPHONE ONE THROUGH FOUR. IN FACT, NO GLITCHES ON ANY MACS SINCE I BOUGHT MY FIRST APPLE PRODUCT - a II e - IN 1983. AM I MISSING SOMETHING? NEVER OWNED A WINDOWS PRODUCT. NOT MISSING ANYTHING THERE FOR SURE! OH, WELL, I WILL JUST KEEP ON DOING APPLE BECAUSE, WELL, APPLE JUST KEEPS ON DOING FOR ME EVERYTHING I NEED DOING IN MY LIFE. IT'S JUST THAT SIMPLE.

[jws2346]

03:57 PM on 03/16/2011

As much as I'm not really a fan of Apple, isn't this just a little bit "nit picky"?

[tootrue]

10:39 PM on 03/15/2011

My iPhone 4 handled the change just fine.

[dukeofurl01]

10:14 PM on 03/15/2011

Hmm. Mine handled the time change just fine.

[Mister Grumpy]

04:39 PM on 03/15/2011

Funny......... I don't know of a single person that owns an Android OS phone having this problem...........

Yep....... Apple is superior.......... in their own minds maybe...............

[Chico41]

12:11 PM on 03/15/2011

Apple is much too concerned with important things like having more control of your phone than you do, and charging ridiculous amounts of money for the privilege, to worry about something as unimportant as this.

[Highball]

02:29 PM on 03/15/2011

Not a single thing in that comment made a lick of sense.

How does Apple have more control over my phone than I do? Please explain.

[Chico41]

03:50 PM on 03/15/2011

How many different operating systems can you put on that thing? How many different options do you have to import media onto it? How easily can you write an app and put it on your phone without it first being approved by someone else? You pay full price for something, and you can't even do what you want with it. Doesn't that seem a little strange to you?

The problem is that iPhone users don't know what they're missing, so they assume they're getting everything.

[Highball]

12:00 PM on 03/15/2011

I had no problem whatsoever, with any device.

I'm wondering what caused the problem, for those who had one. Because I've never had a time-related problem with any iteration of the iPhone I've had (or any other device, for that matter).

[poster1122]

02:21 PM on 03/15/2011

I'm guessing the problem is related to some formula each alarm stores for determining local time. For example, the alarms I set before the DST transition go off one hour early, even though the normal clock shows the right time. But the alarms I set after the DST transition go off at the right time. That suggests the rule for calculating local time are tied to the individual alarm instances and those rules are not correcting properly for the transition.

Ultimately, in my case, I had to delete all my old alarms and set new ones. Kind of a pain, but at least the alarms went off an hour early instead of an hour late. I lost some sleep. In the fall, people could actually miss buses, be late to work, etc. That would be much worse.

[Highball]

02:28 PM on 03/15/2011

Gotcha. That makes sense.

[Angelus2007]

11:57 AM on 03/15/2011

I had no issue with the time change. I am wondering if those having a problem weren't getting a signal. The phone syncs with the cell signal to update the clock, so I wonder if someone was in airplane mode, or had no signal if the phone would change time. I don't know if that is the issue, but just a guess.

[Aimee Bellefleur Hogan]

11:50 AM on 03/15/2011

If you absolutely need to, do it the old-fashioned way and call the operator. They will be able to give you the correct time. Or, buy a clock.

[JackTheSkipper]

10:26 PM on 03/15/2011

Why do you even bother to call an operator? Use the telegraph to get the time.

[Aimee Bellefleur Hogan]

03:46 PM on 03/19/2011

Why do you have to be so ru.de?! You know, it's not smart to rely on just one thing. Sometimes the old fashioned way is really not so bad after all.

[JasonMcl]

08:04 AM on 03/15/2011

This is the third time related failure in a row.
Is Apple not even remotely embarrassed by this?

[Chico41]

12:13 PM on 03/15/2011

Of course they're not. The only ones that are ridiculing them are the people with enough sense not to support them. It could be revealed that using iPhones causes spontaneous pregnancy, and the growth of extra limbs, and the fanboys and girls would still line up like little lemmings to buy the newest shiny toy.

[wonderYrednow]

01:41 PM on 03/16/2011

OUCH! That hurt my Third Blind Eye.

[blurredmolly]

08:01 AM on 03/15/2011

not mine, h8ers

[herdlr]

02:23 AM on 03/15/2011

Hey folks. Did you all know they still make clocks?

[LCLA]

12:58 AM on 03/15/2011

It wasn't just iPhones.
My AT&T phone (made by Sony Ericsson) didn't adjust the time until Sunday evening.

[Ivabign]

03:13 PM on 03/16/2011

Shhh ... don't tell the Apple haters

[MaxPowerXP]

12:14 AM on 03/15/2011

I don't know what's more hilarious; the fact that a phone manufactured in 2010/2011 can't handle dalight saving time, something which pretty much every OS has had down pat for 20 years or more or the fact that there are Apple fanboys protesting that it's not a bug because no one needs a clock anyway.

[skibum415]

04:16 AM on 03/15/2011

Its amazing Apple fanboys are blind to flaws (repeated flaws) in Apple's product. Microsoft had this flaw the first year after Congress changed up when "DST" is invoked & revoked but they patched it & everything went on fine.

Now, as a Microsoft lover, unlike Apple fanboys who never see anything wrong with their golden child I have to rip on Microsoft. Come on, after Apple made the major screw up of not having copy/paste functionality on their mobile devices, you go make the same dumb mistake. George Santayana once wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Get your act together Microsoft, you are better than Apple (which is why Gates had to bail them out by buying a massive portion keeping them as a competitor for anti-trust reasons). Learn from their mistakes otherwise people may start leaving your products for the controlling, expensive, & dictatorial experience that is Apple.

Along the lines of learning from other's mistakes, I despise Apple because it controls what one installs on it's products by forcing developers to publish, & be approved, through Apple's iTunes. This is anti-capitalistic & bad business. Anyone should be able to load software on THEIR device, they BOUGHT it. Hopefully you reconsider this regarding WP7.

Hopefully Apple fanboys can take a lesson from someone who admires Microsoft for what it's done while refusing to keep his head in the sand. For Pete’s sake, get your head out of the dirt, the view's better up

[James Pakele]

05:01 AM on 03/15/2011

Not sure how a flaw in the daylight savings time lead to Microsoft and copy and paste. But ok.... Also, gotta admit, I'm not a big Microsoft lover at the moment, but I was once a big fan.... having said all that..

I believe Microsoft is finding much value in working with the "Hacking" community through it's experience with the Kinect. If they carry the lesson along to the WP7 platform that could keep them in the game... Hopefully they continue to work with the home brew community. Motorola also mad a big step in that direction by not locking down the Xoom...

[Vivian Alicia Evans]

10:40 PM on 03/14/2011

My internal clock works great as a back up.