6

Using a tool to compare the internal clock of my Android device to internet time servers, I noticed my device is 30 seconds wrong.

So that made me wondering what is the cause of this error. Where does Android gets it time from, so I can adjust or complain there:

I can think of the following sources:

  • Provided by the cellular network provider.
  • From GPS.
  • From a NTP server on the local WIFI network.
  • A global NTP server (hosted by Google)?
Improve this question
1
  • I've never understood why smartphone clocks are typically never synchronised by the OS with the time data received from GPS. I understand that there are 3rd party apps that can do this, it just seems a really obvious feature.
    – Roberto Tyley
    Commented Apr 9, 2013 at 14:04

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
5

When I go to my Date & time settings, there is option that says: Automatic - Use network-provided values. So, basing on this wording (also in other languages), I would say that automatic time is provided from your carrier.

There are apps, that can sync your clock with GPS satellites or NTP servers.

Improve this answer
3
  • 1
    Note that there are carriers that doesn't provide time synchronization service, on those carriers you have to synchronize your clock manually
    – Lie Ryan
    Commented Mar 24, 2012 at 1:26
  • And without the device being rooted, those apps can only adjust the device's time when it's at least 30s off, unfortunately...
    – Izzy
    Commented Mar 21, 2013 at 16:39
  • When I set a wrong time and switch back to automatic time, it's off by 0.2-0.3 seconds. Do you have anymore info on how this carrier-provided network time works? Like, does it literally go "Hey what's the time" -> "it's 12:43:30.2" or is there some back and forth to figure out the latency? Because 0.2-0.3s latency sounds fitting to me over 3g (HSDPA) abroad and would be a really stupid way of doing this.
    – Luc
    Commented Nov 25, 2019 at 11:48

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .