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I have a Moto G XT1033 with ResurrectionRemix-M-5.6.8-20160502-falcon ROM.

Yesterday night after a low battery alert I had a Whatsapp unread notification from my friend. I opened the message and found that I had a unread message from him which I remembered reading in morning.

Then I observed that I was missing my conversation with him from that time onwards till I noticed this. I also observed that that all Personal/Group Chats were also missing the entire duration's chats.

I thought maybe Whatsapp had reverted to an Old Message backup. But then I found that Firefox was missing 12-15 hours worth of browsing history.

I had also observed that the SMS which I received from the bank in the evening had disappeared. As well Google Play Store re-updated two applications which it had already updated in the evening. I had also lost some Photographs which I took with my phone in the evening. Call History is also missing for the day.

Google Now showed it was last updated 20 Hours ago.

From all this it looks like my phone Time-Travelled from morning to night.

QUESTION: Aside from Time-Travelling. How is this even technically possible for the Entire phone to rollback its memory/state/data to some previous time.

I think I had noticed this behavior few months back also, when I lost some Whatsapp chats but that time I thought it must be a Whatsapp bug and did not investigate.

UPDATE1 (16th Jan 2017, 10:35PM IST): It happened again today (Now around 10:30 PM IST).

My phone automatically restarted. (As if it just time-travelled and entered current time).

Restart Vibration made me alert for expecting this scenario. As soon as the phone started, I switched the phone to Airplane Mode to prevent Time-Line contamination

This Time I am observing the following:

  • Google Now Updated 8 hours ago.
  • Battery Graph is missing some time. (Time Jump?) But battery has decreased. Battery Graph is missing some timeTime Jump Started around 4PMenter image description here
  • Outlook is missing the Mails it received at around 9PM
  • Inbox is also missing Mails.
  • Call History looks good. Last call 8 Hours ago (2:10PM). Time Jump started around 4PM.
  • Whatsapp is missing chats which I received at around 6:30PM. Whatsapp showing already read messages as unread
  • Sync Timings enter image description hereenter image description hereenter image description hereenter image description hereenter image description here
  • Llama Event Logs enter image description hereenter image description here

If additional Info is required please inform. I will try to get it before I turn off Airplane Mode

Update2 (17th Jan 2017, 8:33PM IST): It Looks now phone has become a Serial Time Traveller.

It restarted just now and the battery graph is missing two blocks of time. Whatsapp messages are missing as well. enter image description hereenter image description hereenter image description here

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  • Interesting issue. I have some theories, but I can't find anything on the internet that may prove it: 1) ROM's backup and rollback feature; doesn't seem to exist. 2) data lost due to low battery; not sure if it's possible. I'm curious if the phone had powered off due to low battery or not since you only mentioned "low battery alert". Also, are you using any features that are related to file system, e.g. full disk encryption? (again, not sure if it's possible)
    – Andrew T. ♦
    Commented Jan 10, 2017 at 4:27
  • My Observations: 1) I have a "Backup & Reset" in Settings>System Section. This backup is currently "ON". But no restore option. I believe this provided by Default and not ROM Specific. But might be the culprit. 2) Data Lost: Phone did not power off. I immediately started charging as I Observed the above behavior. My Phone's current up-time is 107 hours, So it was started a day before I wrote this question. But I don't know if up-time is affected by Time travel :P Phone Encryption is OFF.
    – AEonAX
    Commented Jan 10, 2017 at 4:49
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    Did your phone perchance reach 88 mph? In all seriousness though, it's technically possible to take snapshots, then you can roll back to a previous snapshot—but I doubt any phone does this (but it's a feature of Linux, so possible). Though maybe they'd use it for backups—one use for snapshots is that they don't change on you, allowing a consistent backup.
    – derobert
    Commented Jan 12, 2017 at 17:52
  • You are probably best off contacting the ROM developer with the info you posted here. This is a very specific issue.
    – Ethan Z
    Commented Feb 12, 2017 at 13:04

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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I thought I was the only one facing this issue, and I didn't even know how to describe my problem back then. Looks like we're on the same boat. Even I'm using the Moto G (XT1033), but on NXROM 10.2, and I started facing this issue around a year ago until last December. The phone randomly reboots when I'm using it, and as you had described, it went back in time, and all the messages, downloaded files, statictics for a period of time and other stuff just vanished. I tried to Google this up, and here is my understanding (I may be wrong, so please correct me if so):

It turns out that this happens due to a kernel panic, and when the fsync function is not executed. fsync is responsible for writing the data from the buffers (all changes you make to data, like new messages, photos etc. is stored temporarily here) to the internal storage. When a kernel panic occurs, all the data in the buffer is not moved to the internal storage, but just vanishes. So all those changes you made just vanishes into thin air.

I was pretty frustrated about this, and then I stumbled upon LSpeed (available on Play Store). There was a battery profile which emphasises on conserving battery life. It disables kernel panic, and modifies a whole lot of other settings. Since I installed that, I've not faced this issue again. Try this out and do let me know how it works out for you.

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  • Your reasoning looks good. I will try this once it becomes reproducible again as I have flashed RR-N-v5.8.2-20170309-falcon-WEEKLY. It is no longer reproduced on my phone.
    – AEonAX
    Commented Apr 4, 2017 at 3:53
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However, all applications rely on system clock. In the case system clock go backward by some reason (some application feature or bug, malware, virus, something else), you will get "travel in past" in all of your applications. It is normal in the case your clock was setting back by some application.

There is a reason to worry 'cause I see no reasons for normal good-willing applications to do so. Try to check your phone using some anti-virus program and clean up all applications you don't obviously installed.

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  • No funny things installed. Lookout is running as usual. I feel files should not be deleted because of Time rollback.
    – AEonAX
    Commented Feb 12, 2017 at 12:28

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