iPhone time 30 sec behind?

Michael Graubart · Aug 23, 2015

I have an old iPhone, an iPhone 3G. For ages, the time it showed was about 30 seconds behind BBC time or the time shown on my Mac desktop computer. There has been correspondence about this phenomenon from various iPhone users. The upshot seemed to be that it is a fault in the phones and that it was corrected in later models of iPhone. Also that Settings could be used temporarily to correct the time even on an old phone, but that it would revert after a time.

I have just realized that the time shown on my phone is now only about 2 seconds slow! I have no idea when it near-corrected itself, except that it might have happened when, on holiday in France in July, I set the time zone accordingly and returned it to British time when I returned on 31 July. (I did not check the accuracy at the time.)

The time shown is independent of whether I am on wi-fi or not.

I should be very interested to hear from other iPhone users.

APX7000 · Aug 24, 2015

Maybe your carrier is not on Atomic time, and that's why it's incorrect on your phone.

The 3G is very old and may not have any way of obtaining the current time like newer phones can, except via your carrier time code which could be off.

Michael Graubart · Aug 25, 2015

Thanks, APX7000, that goes some way to explaining possible discrepancies. But you have misread my post, which said that my iPhone's time is now very nearly correct.

APX7000 · Aug 25, 2015

It's possible the tower your phone is connected to is not connected to any atomic time source like GPS, WWV. The tower could be transmitting the wrong time and it's reference oscillator is drifting ever so slightly ever time.

I don't know much about iPhone hardware before the iPhone 4 and its supported firmware with respect to setting options.

Does your iPhone have in its setting for a clock adjustment? If so, is it set for "Set Automatically"?

Michael Graubart · Aug 25, 2015

APX7000, thanks v. much again — but you are still writing as if I were complaining that my phone shows the wrong time. It doesn't, and I am not complaining. On the contrary, it has corrected itself, and I was writing out of curiosity to see if anyone might have an idea of how it did so.

Michael Graubart · Aug 25, 2015

PS: Here are a few posts, elsewhere, relevant to this: Iphone 3gs displays the wrong time | Apple Support Communities

And there are some in this forum listed just below this present post.

But I repeat: I am not complaining! My phone used to be about 30 seconds out —much less than the phones of many of these other people — and is now merely 2 seconds out, which doesn't worry me at all. Quite the contrary.