No connection – Date/Time wrong

[Michael KJ]

I went on vacation to a place that does not have any signal. Status bar shows connection box with X. I took some pictures and noticed that they were saved with date October 26 (it was August 20) and incorrect time. Then I noticed that this date and time is displayed. Next time I had some signal date and time were corrected. I figured that if I turn on airplane mode the device should know that there is no source of date and time data and it would keep whatever internal clock has. I turned the device off. Next time I turned it back on date and time were wrong again. I switched Date and Time to manual and repeated exercise with Airplane mode followed by off and on. Same result: date and time were wrong. Is there a way to keep date and time? My PC succeeds only once a week or so to synchronize time but it keeps whatever it has. Can Galaxy do the same? In general does this device have internal clock?

 

[Hadron]

The mistake is turning the phone off.

I'm guessing this phone is old enough that the motherboard backup battery has died. So when you turn it off the clock loses its time and resets to a default value (is the year wrong as well? Like 1970 wrong?). If you set it manually, or get enough signal for it to update it should keep time ok, but turning it off is causing it to lose it. This wouldn't have happened when it was new, but after a couple of years it's common.

 

[Michael KJ]

The phone was bought in November 2016, it is 1 year and 9 month old. I could not find any information about motherboard backup battery. If it exists it should last longer then a year and 9 month. Default date is October 26 2018 and time 11:53 AM. I turned it off to save juice: being without cell service also means no electricity. I found that battery last longer when device is powered down and not wasting juice trying to find a tower.

 

[Hadron]

Interesting, normally the default date in event of a complete power loss is 1970. But otherwise that's what this sounds like.

Airplane mode will stop it from looking for signals. Of course it will use even less power when turned off, but if you are losing the date/time each time you power down, and care about that, then that's the choice.

 

[svim]

There isn't a motherboard backup battery (more commonly referred to as a CMOS battery) in your phone, there simply isn't enough space for one. That's mostly something used in desktops and laptops, not smartphones. Our phones generally rely on 'real-time clock' chips, a solid state alternative to an actual CMOS battery. The RTC is typically powered by your phone's lithium battery and it only requires a minimal trickle charge to retain info like the current date and time. But with the battery removed there's still essences of power in the motherboard and once those drain out (after a few seconds or minutes, which varies widely depending on the model) than the RTC loses stored info. Turning the phone back on however powers everything back up and if there's any kind of WiFi or cellular connectivity your phone is always syncing its date and time regularly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_clock

As for those photos with the incorrect date and time, if you use Google Photos on your phone and haven't disabled the automatic backup & sync function, you can alter/correct the date and time using the web interface. The app doesn't have this feature, you need to log into your account on a web browser:
https://photos.google.com
open up the image, click on the Info icon (circle with an 'i' inside it), a contextual panel on right will show up, and then click on the little pencil icon to edit the date and time. A little cumbersome and you need to do this one at a time (no batch changing). There are ways do multiple date/time alts using a terminal and the 'date' and 'touch' commands but it does require root.

 

[Michael KJ]

Thank you for info and photo-advise. I usually download pictures into a big NAS device to share on my local network and group them. After time passes it might be confusing to see summer pictures with October dates. From what you are saying this particular phone must have its RTC powered after actual on/off switch because what I described happens without removing battery (as far as I know the cover is glued and removing buttery is not easy). From experimenting internal capacitance keeps RTC powered just few seconds.

 

[svim]

OK this it a good idea, storing your photo library in a NAS is a more practical strategy. Accessing the photo files directly using a computer UI to batch edit the time stamps on that grouping of photos is probably the most expedient way.
I don't know which photo manager app you're using so this might not even apply. I stopped relying on the Gallery app and now just use the Google Photos app but from I remember the Gallery app wasn't the most responsive to automatically re-indexing info like date and time changes done directly to photos, as opposed to changes made using the app's interface. Needed to do stuff like clear the Gallery app's cache to prompt it. Just an anecdotal observation.