Cell Phone: Wrong Time?

I am not claiming anything is happening. Let me just start off saying that.

So far I have seen 6 people post something on Facebook similar to this:

“My alarm went off this morning at its normal time.. I go and walk out of the room, and the clock in the living room is 20 minutes ahead…”

All 6 people used their cell phones as their alarms by the way.

Now, At first, I thought.. “Silly! You fell back asleep!!!”, but as the other posts showed up (No connection between the 6 individuals) It puzzled me, I asked which cell phone carriers a few were the same, but for the most part, they were different.

How could this happen??


Again, I am not saying anything is “Going on” I am asking a question here, how could 6 people (In a general 20 mile radius) all have a cell phone time problem? Each time it was posted, it was from 8am alarm to 8:20 on other clocks, and when they looked at their phones again to compare, the time was the same as on another clock.

I know my car loses time often, every week or so I have to change the time back to “normal” but I figured that did not happen with Cell Phones.



ETA: I should also add, the people posting this are very reputable people, not one to make up stories, or anything of the sort.

Originally posted by Britx
I am not claiming anything is happening. Let me just start off saying that.

So far I have seen 6 people post something on Facebook similar to this:

“My alarm went off this morning at its normal time.. I go and walk out of the room, and the clock in the living room is 20 minutes ahead…”

All 6 people used their cell phones as their alarms by the way.

Now, At first, I thought.. “Silly! You fell back asleep!!!”, but as the other posts showed up (No connection between the 6 individuals) It puzzled me, I asked which cell phone carriers a few were the same, but for the most part, they were different.

How could this happen??


Again, I am not saying anything is “Going on” I am asking a question here, how could 6 people (In a general 20 mile radius) all have a cell phone time problem? Each time it was posted, it was from 8am alarm to 8:20 on other clocks, and when they looked at their phones again to compare, the time was the same as on another clock.

I know my car loses time often, every week or so I have to change the time back to “normal” but I figured that did not happen with Cell Phones.



ETA: I should also add, the people posting this are very reputable people, not one to make up stories, or anything of the sort.

edit on 19/12/2012 by Britx because: (no reason given)

i...

have NO idea..

reply to post by Komodo


Neither do I. I was hoping someone here may have an idea!

One of the ladies said she went to her providers store, and they checked her phone out and nothing was wrong.

reply to post by Britx
My cell phone alarm went off five minutes late this morning, the readout showed the time to be five minutes slower than all of my other clocks. The weird part? I set all of my other clocks by the time on my cell phone, and before I went to bed they all displayed the same time!

My phone's been doing this too. It'll change the time on me randomly.

Some times I lose whole days. One time it was set to 1988..... I have a Sony arc. I just put it down to the fact that modern tech' is so cheaply made it probably doesn't know what time it is anyway.

reply to post by Britx


It's possible that even though they were on different carriers, being in that same radius they might have still been hitting the same cel tower (carriers sometimes share towers)? Possibly time was messed up on it for a bit this morning? I don't know if cel phones get their time from the carrier or the tower so I can't say for sure if this could be the case. Just a guess...

reply to post by GMan420


I never thought about that, I dont really "Know" how cell phones work...

I don't know where cell phones get their clock information, do the people live near each other? Maybe if their phones get time info from the same cell tower, if that's even how it works, then maybe it messed up? I don't know.

reply to post by Havox


They are all within a 20 mile radius of me, in all directions. And this did not happen to me, as I also have an 8AM alarm set.

reply to post by Britx


Nevermind just re-read and saw. I don't know if different services use same towers for a location/area, could be it.

reply to post by Havox


2 of them have the same, the other 4 are all different.

2 Have Sprint (Different Phones- I also have Sprint)
One have Metro PCS,
One has Cricket Wireless,
One has AT&T
and One has T-Mobile.

reply to post by Joneselius


I am glad to see they are not the only ones being affected by this!

I don`t know anything about cell phones but i would assume that the clock is powered by a battery,probably a different battery than the battery that powers the phone so that the clock doesn`t need to be reset each time the phone battery dies.
The clock on your computer is powered by a small battery,even on desktop computers.

reply to post by Britx


Happened to me too!


I just corrected it manually and went about my business.

Originally posted by Tardacus
I don`t know anything about cell phones but i would assume that the clock is powered by a battery,probably a different battery than the battery that powers the phone so that the clock doesn`t need to be reset each time the phone battery dies.
The clock on your computer is powered by a small battery,even on desktop computers.

Yes, but the time comes to the phone from the signal, that's why the cell phones know to change when you cross into other time zones or when daylight savings hits. Your oven or microwave won't do that.

Actually i've also had this issue, there day ago. Didn't notice it until I checked my SMS inbox. It said I has a new message, received February 1st. Also I had a missed call, same date. Rebooting the phone didn't help, pulling the battery while the phone was on did. Before that I tried to set the time & date manually, which worked, however when the phone restarted it was back on network time (future time).

Yesterday my phone thought it was 2007. The phone itself wasn't even produced before 2010