Continually Changing Time Zone Settings on Cingular BlackJack

[Mike Temporale]

I've been using a Cingular BlackJack for a couple weeks now and it's a great phone. There are some things I liked better on the i320, but the much improved reception on the BlackJack outweighs all those things. One problem I've been having is getting my time zone and time set correctly. When the phone arrived, I was surprised to see that the time was correct. So I never checked the time zone settings on the phone. Silly me. A couple days later I noticed that my appointment reminders were firing long after the events. :? Checking the time zone settings, I found that my phone was actually set to GMT +4 Abu Dhabi. Now, I should be in GMT -5 Eastern, so that's a big difference. I corrected the time zone and went on about my business. A couple days later, I noticed the same thing again! I was starting to think that I dreamt the last problem. But this happened a couple more times. I keep updating it, but I keep finding that it changes back to GMT +4.

I just noticed that there's a Auto Update field at the bottom of the Date and Time settings page. I'm guessing that Auto Update is referring to the time zone settings, but I don't know for sure. i'll be setting it to No, and we'll see if my device can actually keep the correct time for a change. If anyone else is having this same issue, you might want to look into changing this setting too.

[Jerry Raia]

Thats quite a TZ change! I guess we can't say its because you are close to another TZ. Isn't Eastern -4? I spent a lot of time in Central and it was
-5 I thought. Mine is set to "on" and I haven't seen this happen.

[Mike Temporale]

Thats quite a TZ change! I guess we can't say its because you are close to another TZ. Isn't Eastern -4? I spent a lot of time in Central and it was
-5 I thought. Mine is set to "on" and I haven't seen this happen.

During Daylight Savings it would be -4.

I think it just goes to show you that the carriers can't be trusted to help set the clock on your phone. :lol:

[edgar]

Mine is set on - time is fine and even determined PST all on its own.

Aren't you in Canookia? The phone just wishes it was in warmer weather?

[Jerry Raia]

During Daylight Savings it would be -4.

I thought the OS took care of that. :?

[edgar]

Yup Dst is managed ok.

I'm thinking user error Jerry, what do you think? ;)

[Jerry Raia]

It's the cold up there. Messes up the devices. :lol:

[Rocco Augusto]

what is your computers TZ set too? I remember once, way back when, i was having an odd problem such as this. turned out i had the TZ on my computer set to something crazy and it kept changing my phones TZ setting. :)

[whydidnt]

Well, certainly sounds odd. I think the phones are supposed to be able to pick up the time and timezone off from the cell tower, when that box is checked. It seems that either the BJ isn't reading that right or your local tower isn't configured correctly.

The issue with appointments would be compounded in this situation, due to MS decision to auto-adjust appointments based upon time zone. If you set the appointment while the phone was on Dubai time and then the time zone was adjusted, either manually or by the tower, the appointments would automatically adjust to accommodate the change in time. I have heard stories of people missing their airplanes because of this behavior. 8O

Because of the issues in my second paragraph, I always turn off the auto update time feature on any of my phones. I often travel between timezones and it's too hard for me work backwords when entering an appointment I will have in the new time zone.

[dd-mj]

I ran into the same problem 2 weeks ago. I called Cingular support and they asked me to pull the battery and sim card out of the phone. They they said they pushed new information for the phone. When I put the card and battery back in the phone all was good. I have not had a problem since.

Prior to calling Cingular, I had turned on/off/on the phone, changed the time zone, etc. Nothing helped. I am in California and my time zone was being set to a time zone in China.

Originally I thought the problem was due to Facade/Paprus, because the phone date/time were showing differently on the phone then on the calendar.

In the end I think something went wacky on the Cingular side.

So no you are not alone...

Other than that problem - I have had no other problems with this phone. This is by far my best phone ever. It is definitely the best MS based device I have ever owned and I stared with the Philips Velo and Nino - for those who can remember back that far.

[porpackage]

Another bug with this phone is that text messages received have all the wrong time stamp... have you come acrossed this?

[edgar]

No, just checked my sms's received, they are all correct.

[Rocco Augusto]

No, just checked my sms's received, they are all correct.

same here, the only bug i have found is that my Blackjack hates Vista... which sucks because now i can't hook my phone up to my laptop to take screenshots :(

im sure this is directly related to windows mobile device center and not relaly a BJ bug, but i felt left out :)

[Mike Temporale]

same here, the only bug i have found is that my Blackjack hates Vista...

Nah, works fine for me. 8)

[Mike Temporale]

Aren't you in Canookia? The phone just wishes it was in warmer weather?

Nah, don't think that's it either. We're actually above seasonal - and it doesn't look to be changing. In fact IIRC, Buffalo got more snow and was colder than we were last winter. :mrgreen:

[Jerry Raia]

The only problem I'm having with vista is I plugged in the BlackJack before I installed the mobility add on. Now it won't discover the BlackJack and I can't find the BlackJack on the computer to delete it and start over. :evil:

[runbuh]

Speaking of fun - have you checked the USB settings and played around with using your BlackJack as a USB flash drive? Worked pretty well (my storage card is what my computer "saw" at the flash drive). I think the BlackJack did lock up on me when I tried to switch from Flash Drive mode back to ActiveSync mode, but I do have a bunch of crap installed on my BlackJack.

[Foxbat121]

While most cell towers have correct time, most of them don't have correct time zone settings because only Windows Mobile phones care about time zone (for calendar events). Other phones only care about time. When you have auto-update on, it updates both time and time zone from whatever tower it is connected. So, driving around you may ended up with a really screwed up phone. Fortunately, it does not update that often.

It is a known issue here in east coast for Cingular. My 8125 always get set to Indiana time zone when Auto update is on. Cingular has to disable and hide the UI for 8125 firmware to aviod this issue. I use the 3rd party firmware and played with it on for while and can't stand the messed up schdule.