
A month back, we had written about the Daylight Saving Time bug in the latest version of iOS that affected iPhone users in New Zealand by triggering the alarm an hour ahead of schedule.
As noted back then, the problem arose after the country switched to Daylight Saving Time in late September. This issue had also spread to Australia the following week as iPhone users in the island nation switeched to Daylight Saving Time.
It now appears that iPhone users in Europe and Middle East too have been experiencing similar issues after these countries switched over to Standard Time yesterday. However, unlike the Southern Hemisphere where the bug caused the alarm to go off an hour earlier, iPhones in the Northern Hemisphere are seemingly triggered an hour late. This has quite evidently resulted in a lot of iPhone users waking up late for work or school.
You can checkout the video demo of the daylight saving time bug:
It is worth noting that Apple has acknowledged the issue and has promised to fix the bug in the upcoming iOS 4.2 update.
But since users in the United States are scheduled to switch back to Standard Time on November 7, it will be interesting to see if Apple releases iOS 4.2 this week to avoid many more iPhone users getting affected by this bug.
Nevertheless, if you are one of those users who have been affected by this issue already, do note that a temporary fix to the problem can be achieved by turning off the recurring alarm on your iPhone and instead relying on the single use alarm (not ideal). Alternately, you may also set your alarm to go off an hour earlier (in the northern hemisphere) or later (in the southern hemisphere) as need be.
Are you facing this bug? Tell us in the comments.
[via TUAW]
I am from the Toronto area and I am Having this problem now, pain in the butt!
It started yesterday 10/31/10
I have had an alarm set at 6:10 am for the past year and 2 days ago my phone started going off at 5:10 am. I thought my phone was just being screwy but I guess I am being affected by something since this is what is happening. Should note that I live in Las Vegas, NV not Europe or overseas anywhere buy right here in the U.S.
Yea no problem for me .. I don't use the alarm of iPhone .. I'm Mexican .. I have sticky balls ..
Same here but I'm in Toronto Canada
Also… I erased that alarm this morning and set a new one for a couple minutes later and it went off at the correct time.
Getting information on a lot of US users. I think it depends on how device was jail broken.
From information i am getting devices in US that are not jail broken do not seem to be affected.
Thanks for the heads up, iphonehackx. I develop iPhone apps and let me tell you, the timezone support available in obj-c is awfully complex. Apparently, Apple themselves has fallen victim to their own confusing libraries!
I live in london and set a alarm 5 minutes after the current time and It went off at the right time no problem for me, maybe it's just some iPhone affected?
No problems here either! We turned our clocks last Saturday night here in Sweden, and my 3 GS with iOS 4.1 both switched the time correctly, and woke me up at the time I had set the alarm.
Damn I'm 1 hour late
3gs V4.1 UK
I thought it was just my phone, phew. Alarm works if set to repeat every day, it doesn't go off if set to repeat any less than every day. It also works if set as a single alarm.
I fixed it by editing the alarm, putting it an hour forward then saving it. Then edit again, put the alarm an hour back (to where it was originally), save it again of course. That's it. It works again.
There is a jailbreak app from hitoriblog source that enables your iPhone to sync with a time server frequently. Thanks to it I never experienced any daylight saving time problems.
Kyiv, Ukraine – no signs of a bug. I gave a good clock, and as far as if now, both it and the iPhone work correctly to the time schedule, so there's no problem for me.
Hate typos >:(
I've found that setting the alarm to recur on week days only fixes the problem. mountain time US
I live in Alaska, it just started saturday going off an hour early. Really messes with ya, but i'd rather it go off an hour early than an hour late.
I'm on 4.0.1 and I set my alarm for 6:00 AM but alarm went off at 7:00 AM. An hour late for work.
Russia, Moscow. Late for work for an hour today. Really stupid!
Always works!!! yeah right, they cannot even get the alarm app to work properly.
This is crazy that Apple has not tuned the software that well?
I live in NC and this bug affected me on Monday morning. Both of my alarms when off an hour early! It did that for 2 days until I deleted the alarms completely and created new ones. I wonder why I was affected a week before Daylight savings time reaches the US?!
It’s actually a great and helpful piece of info. I’m glad that you just shared this useful info with us. Please keep us up to date like this. Thanks for sharing.