Phone's "Automatic Time" Changed Zone Randomly

[lune12]

I rely on my Galaxy A53 phone for alarms in order to wake up on time for events as well as my job, which I have to arrive at by 7:45 with a 30 minute commute.  Overnight, my phone's 'automatic time' changed to Pacific from Eastern Daylight Time.  I woke up at 7:15 today, but my phone said it was 4:15; this was the first time that my phone did this.  Obviously, this caused me to be late today and poses quite the problem.  I know how to change it, and manually selected my correct time zone, but I just cannot wrap my head around why.  It was the automatic time zone, as previously stated, so it was nothing that I did as far as selecting the incorrect time zone.  I also am not using a VPN, if that changes anything.  Why on Earth did my phone's automatic time zone change randomly?

[BlueSkies]

Do you have a Samsung watch or are you using 2 different time zones? Samsung clock has the dual time zone mode https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/how-do-i-change-the-date-and-time/

[lune12]

I don't have any other Samsung devices, just my phone.  I didn't know about the dual time zone, that's interesting!

[LongHiker · Accepted solution]

@lune12 When set to automatic time, your phone gets the time from your carrier's base station. Perhaps that base station had a glitch or some other error. 

[lune12]

That makes sense, that's most likely what happened.  Thank you for your input!

[Members_Zjt3uja]

Hello,

I believe I’ve identified the cause of an ongoing and extremely frustrating issue that Samsung needs to address.

After years of dealing with inaccurate time changes, it appears that every time my phone installs a system update, the time zone settings reset. I live in Arizona, bordering Nevada and California. Because Arizona does not observe Daylight Saving Time, I manually set my phone to the Arizona time zone to ensure accuracy.

However, after updates—and especially when traveling near state borders—the phone begins automatically changing time zones, causing the time to jump back and forth. I rely on my phone for accurate time, and this behavior creates real problems. This issue most recently occurred immediately after an overnight update, which strongly supports that updates are triggering the reset.

This is a flawed behavior in the system and has been happening for years. A manual time zone selection should persist through updates and should not be overridden by location changes, especially in regions like Arizona where DST does not apply.

I hope they escalate this issue to the appropriate team and provide a permanent fix. This should not still be happening.