Internal clock issue? Hardware issue?

Help Fairphone 4
1

Hello, my wife owns an FP4, on which LineageOS 20 is installed (MicroG edition).
Overall, it works well, but there are a number of tiny issues that all seem related to the internal clock somehow, even though the displayed time is correct, and the calendar works…

  • she regularly gets reminders for past events;
  • night-mode pinkish display does not end when a new day starts;
  • last time she wanted to use the GPS, it took ages to sync (like 200km…).

Is anyone aware of this issue, and possibly a fix?
Could it be a hardware issue that would need support from Fairphone (the company)?

2

As you mention GPS, maybe use the App GPStest from F-Droid to check this and inject PSDS and Time data

1 Like
3

Is the phone connected to some VPN? If the endpoint is in another country, it could case timezone issues.

Or, does you network use some weirdly configured NTP time server?

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4

The phone is currently acting as an ebook-reader :smiley: so I’ll have a look tomorrow.
But I can already say that no VPN is configured, and configuration is pretty much the standard Google-free configuration that comes with MicroG-enabled LineageOS when in France.

5

There are no NTP settings that I can see:

date et heure
date et heure1080×2340 123 KB

In English:
“Date and Time
Define time automatically
Time zone
Define time zone automatically
Time format
Use default regional parameters”

6

I installed GPSTest, and cleared the cached data and downloaded it anew, using GPSTest UI (“Data” section). I’ll see if things are better now. Thanks for the suggestion.

7

You can try to set the time and timezone to manual. That would reveal if the problem is somewhere there.

8

Thanks @peci1. I’ll refrain from changing anything for a while, to see if fixing the GPS cured the whole issue somehow. If I find out that the issue is still there, then I’ll try your suggestion. Have a nice new year’s eve!

9

You wrote the phone is used as an ebook reader so I imagine it is not connected to a network. In order to find a satellite fast, you need to be regularly connected to the network and the GPS ideally.

2 Likes
10

Hello, and happy new year!
Since I did the GPS fix, at least the GPS is working much better (faster fix).
@Alain I was not clear :slight_smile: The phone is being used to read stories fetched from the Internet (fan-fiction mostly) once in a while, but it is otherwise used like any other phone to browse, plan, chat… and phone of course.
With very few meetings / appointments during the holidays, it’s too soon yet to know if anything improved regarding the late notifications. I’ll let you know. Thanks for the support!

11

Normally (unless reconfigured) your phone synchronizes its time from the network it’s on (i.e. your network provider is also your NTP server).

Now there are some strange things sometimes on the FP4 (at least mine); Sometimes it “forgets” things and has to think about them for a while before it is able to do what I’ve asked for… I tend to call it “absent-minded”. :smile:

This could account for night mode not going away, but past events reminders must be a bug in the calendar app - Unless the phone clearly states it thinks being in the past (time/date display). Check that next time it does remind you about a past event.

As for the GPS issue, it is apparently a fairly common problem, see the thread @yvmuell linked to above. (Which is very worrying, since I travel a lot and use my phone as navigation device.)