• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Questions regarding flight mode/network time.

krichek

Android Enthusiast
Nov 11, 2009
492
41
So I've made a couple of observations that some may find curious or may not care about at all, that have lead me to some questions I'm hoping some one might be able to answer.

If you go into settings/date and time the first option is a check box that says Automatic (use network-provided values). If you uncheck that it does not stick through a reboot. Upon restarting your phone this box will be checked once again.

Now for the interesting part. If I put the phone into flight mode, uncheck the automatic box and then change the time and/or date. The instant I re-check automatic the time is reset correctly. How is this possible? I thought that flight mode actually turned the radio off. If it does indeed turn the radio off then how is the phone able to instantly set the time to the correct value?
 
So I've made a couple of observations that some may find curious or may not care about at all, that have lead me to some questions I'm hoping some one might be able to answer.

If you go into settings/date and time the first option is a check box that says Automatic (use network-provided values). If you uncheck that it does not stick through a reboot. Upon restarting your phone this box will be checked once again.

Now for the interesting part. If I put the phone into flight mode, uncheck the automatic box and then change the time and/or date. The instant I re-check automatic the time is reset correctly. How is this possible? I thought that flight mode actually turned the radio off. If it does indeed turn the radio off then how is the phone able to instantly set the time to the correct value?

interesting question.
 
Upvote 0
Yeah, I'm guessing that the phone keeps track of the last "right" time as far as the network is concerned and saves it, so that when you go back to using the network to set your phone, it goes back to the last "right" network time, regardless of whether you have network connectivity. I assume that when you turn the radio back on it goes back to keeping itself synced via the network as usual. One way to really put this to the test would be to turn off the network-provided values box, turn on flight mode, change the time, then physically change time zones, and then hit the network-provided values box again without turning flight mode off. If your phone adjusts the time *and* is able to compensate for the time zone difference, then you have something weirder going on, I think.
 
Upvote 0
So I've made a couple of observations that some may find curious or may not care about at all, that have lead me to some questions I'm hoping some one might be able to answer.

If you go into settings/date and time the first option is a check box that says Automatic (use network-provided values). If you uncheck that it does not stick through a reboot. Upon restarting your phone this box will be checked once again.

Now for the interesting part. If I put the phone into flight mode, uncheck the automatic box and then change the time and/or date. The instant I re-check automatic the time is reset correctly. How is this possible? I thought that flight mode actually turned the radio off. If it does indeed turn the radio off then how is the phone able to instantly set the time to the correct value?

It's possible that it simply stores the time/date information. Then again, just because all transmitting functions are disabled doesn't necessarily mean that all receiving functions are disabled as well.

I'd definitely like to hear more about this because, as SamsungVibrant mentioned, it is an interesting question.
 
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones