Time Zone Update

Dirk,

Thanks for the picture. It was worth 1,000 words in any language.

I use AT&T here in the United States, and I have no such option in my settings:

But thanks for the suggestion, and the clarification. I'm glad it fixed the problem for you.

Hey guys,

I also live in Arizona. I've found a workaround for this bug. it's a bit more work, but it will work and will handle the spring onset of DST.

in Settings -> General -> Date & Time, turn "Set Automatically" back on. don't worry about what timezone it says (it'll say Denver right now, and I'm guessing it'll change back to Cupertino in the spring).

Then, get ready for some work, and go to Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars, scroll near to the bottom, tap "Time Zone Support", turn it on, and set your Time Zone to Phoenix.

now go look at your calendar. things may have moved; but now, every item on your calendar, when you edit it, has a timezone as well as a start time and end time.

I was lucky. most of my items had "GMT-0700" as their time zone; this should be functionally equivelant to "Phoenix". I had a few items, though, with "Cupertino" as their timezone, and those items shifted by one hour. I set the time zone on those to "Phoenix" and it fixed their times.

when you create new appointments, it should default to "Phoenix" but you will have the option of setting it to whatever you want.

if apple fixes this bug before spring, we can turn "Time Zone Support" off for good.

if you travel outside of Arizona, turn "Time Zone Support" back off until you get home; appointments will be displayed in your local timezone because the calendar will know they were set in phoenix time (for example: set an appointment for 10am, phoenix, then travel to Cupertino to complain about iOS timezone bugs in person, turn Time Zone Support off when you cross the border, and your appointment should display on your calendar as 9am since it'll be displaying everything in california time. this is actually correct. when you get home and turn time zone support back on, it'll be at 10am again).

alternatively, when you travel, you can set your current timezone manually, in Mail, Contacts, Calendars. so if you fly to new york, when you land, set the timezone to new york. the iphone clock will adjust automatically. your 10am arizona time appointment will display as 12pm in your local timezone of new york (the calendar item, if edited, should still say it occurs at 10am Phoenix time)

more reading about time zone support:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4504

(they don't mention what happens if you fly somewhere and do update your timezone manually; it should change the display of all your events, though, since it knows what timezone they are in).

this is all a pain, but at least this way, I have explicit control of what timezone I want calendar to display, and what timezone my appointments are in.

previously, ios handled this automatically and correctly. maybe someday it will again. in the meantime, I'll do it myself.

If it helps anyone, the solution that I've adopted (until this bug is fixed) is:

1. In Settings > General > Date & Time, turn Set Automatically to Off.
2. Change the Time Zone to Phoenix.
3. Create a reminder that repeats about once a month or so.
4. Over the next month the time on my iPhone gets a little bit off, but not enough to worry about.
5. After a month, go back into the Date & Time and turn Set Automatically back on. This re-synchronizes the time so it's correct again, but also sets the wrong Time Zone.
6. Go to step 1.

Interesting, looks like AZ keeps the same time as pacific time according to this time zone map:

http://www.worldtimezone.com/time-usa12.php

In which case your phone is correct. Does AZ daylight savings change only once during the year?

I changed the Set Automatically to OFF and set the Time Zone to Phoenix... I'll wait until the fix it... I think this problem is related to the iOS 5, because my iPhone 4 has the same problem and it started after the upgrade...

I think they have to release a fix soon, I'm also having problems with the bluetooth and wifi...

If the device is set to "Set Automatically" for the time zone, then it is pulling the information from the cellular network. Check with your carrier to ensure they have the correct settings.

It may also be getting confusing information from the computer that you normally sync with. Verify that the timezone (not just the time) is correct on your computer.

I have the same problem. I've tried a number of the remedies outlined in the support articles, but none of them worked (and all seem to be written for iOS 3).

I, too, live in AZ which does not observe daylight savings time.

An earlier poster posited that the iPhone gets it's time zone information from the cellular network. This might explain the problem if that information is simply the timezone offset (i.e. GMT-7), which would match PST at the moment. But that doesn't explain why my Wi-Fi only iPad has the exact same problem.

Anyway, as long as PDT and MST are the same time, it isn't a problem. I guess we'll see in a few weeks what happens when PDT falls back an hour.

I also live in the Phoenix area and am experiencing this problem. We have several iDevices that are all "acting" differently...

iPhone4s (iOS 5) - Set Automatically = ON, Time Zone = Cupertino

iPhone4 (iOS 5) - Set Automatically = ON, Time Zone = Cupertino

iPod 4th gen (iOS 5) - Set Automatically = ON, Time Zone =Phoenix

iPad and iPad2 (iOS 5) 3G - Set Automatically = ON, Time Zone = Cupertino

iPhone 3GS (iOS 5) no SIM card - Set Automatically = ON, Time Zone = Phoenix

The iPods and iPhone 3GS do not have cellular connectivity and work fine. I am wondering if this is a network issue (AT&T specifically).

Interestingly enough, if you go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and change "Time Zone Support" (under Calendars) to ON, the Time Zone that automatically gets selected is Phoenix.

It'll be interesting to see what happens on Nov 6th when everyone else observes DST and AZ doesn't.

I have a Verizon iPhone 4 that I just upgraded to iOS 5. I kinda wish I had waited; there have been so many bugs and irritating compatibility issues.

I live in Phoenix, also, and my phone is set to get the time automatically; it's showing Cupertino. So, obviously it's not a network problem. I'm afraid to wait and see if this gets fixed; it's going to be a big problem for me. Yeah, I'm on 'Cupertino time' now, but in a few weeks, I'm going to be on mountain time, and following a Cupertino clock is going to make me an hour late. Arizona has its own time zone; all previous iOS iterations got that, so what's the problem now?

As for changing it to set manually, I don't trust that; it has been my experience that it loses time fairly quickly. I left it on manual time inadvertantly once and ended up over 30 minutes late to work because the clock was running so slow. I can't figure out how it lost that much time that quickly, but I do know that I'm not doing that again.

The beauty of having a (very expensive) phone that does everything is that you can use it to do everything -- play music, surf the internet, and even wake up in the morning. I've used my phone as my alarm clock ever since phones started coming with that feature, and I've come to depend on it. They really need to fix this problem *before* November 6th. Really. The only saving grace is that Nov 6th is a Sunday and I have no appointments that day, so the time problem is not going to be disastrous as much as just really, really annoying.

i am in San Francisco, which is in the same timezone as Cupertino, all year round. But i still hate being forced to use "Cupertino" as my time zone. should we be using "Hoboken" as the name of the time zone for everyone on the east coast? This is annoying Apple behavior.

So here's an interesting one. On my iPad 2 I switched "Set Automatically" off and then on, and now, "magically," my time zone is Phoenix like it should be.

Unfortunately this did not work on either my iPhone 4S or my wife's iPhone 4 running iOS 5.

I've spent the last 2 days trying to solve calendar event time problems, first and last at the Apple Store, then with online support on the iPhone and with Mobile Me Support. But no one recognized this problem until I called it to their attention. The iPhone support person actually arranged for me to get a replacement phone when I called it to her attention. But at the Apple Store, everyone who is using automatic time setting had the problem.

The iPhone Support person said she notified the engineers. But if they don't solve the problem before Monday, I'm guessing some people are going to miss some planes and appointments.

If you aren't traveling, set your automatic time setting to OFF until they get this resolved.

GlennW: When you turn Set Time Automatically to OFF, it will allow you to change your time zone. So if you click on that setting, and type in Phx (which is annoying for us Tucsonians 🙂) it will be fine. But it won't help if you have to travel, as I do, next week.

Note that there is another problem created by this: events that you add in Calendar on your iPhone will now appear in your Calendar on your computer in Pacific Time. In fact, it would not let me change these events back to MST. I had to change them first to Central, and THEN choose MST. I had about 25 events that I had to change once I realized the problem.