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At first glance it seems kind of dumb, but who's to say this was the first time he was texted about it? Maybe he was texted on 3/11 and never updated his device and therefore he was texted again.
At first glance it seems kind of dumb, but who's to say this was the first time he was texted about it? Maybe he was texted on 3/11 and never updated his device and therefore he was texted again.
Yeah, two Cingular users at work (EST time zone) are still showing an hour off.
@dewrock: How would Cingular know which phones were not adjusted? Why would they send out the same message to just phones that hadn't been updated?
More importantly, why doesn't the phone just get it's time from the network?
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@kerry: Congress extended DST by 4 weeks in 2005. If you check the link they sent him, it says there's a few devices that are hardcoded to the old time and need to be manually updated.
@kerry: I'm just assuming they would know since you have to visit their website in order to update the time.
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I got an alert on my Cingular phone first thing Sunday morning asking if I wanted to update the time, which it did automatically (and I have a really old phone).
I work at a cellphone place and everyone but the Cingular customers had their phones updated with the correct time.
@Ben Popken: I'm aware of that, I was referring to dewrock's assumption that they would repeatedly send texts to customers who didn't change their clocks. Why would they care and how would they know?
I see that dewrock has clarified, and that system seems kind of silly. My Cingular phones all had the option of getting their time from the network. Why make customers log onto a website to adjust the network-supplied time? I don't get it (clearly).
I got an email from Palm yesterday about the time change saying I should update before the 11th.
Oddly, my phone was working just fine without an update.
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This reminds me of the time Yahoo! Calendar finally got around to reminding me of my friend's July birthday: in November.
I made sure to forward the reminder to him to let him know it wasn't my fault!!! ;)
I know that with my cingular phone the time didn't change until I turned it off and then back on. So I'm guessing if someone never turns off their phone and their time hasn't changed yet. Probably the reason they got the text as well.
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I saw this post and thought, \"Hey, that's a Blackjack! I have a Blackjack. And I have Cingular. I wonder if I have a text message from them.\" Sure enough, it's there. There were no messages on the phone last night, so this is the first time I've received it.
BTW, I tried to change my time on my phone on Sunday, but it auto-updated back to the incorrect time.
I'm following the instructions from the Cingular link right now, and they're kind of a pain in the ass. I have to first go to Microsoft to make sure I have the most recent ActiveUpdate, then download this software patch and transfer to the phone via USB. Since I don't have software that allows me to sync with my home computer (it's a Mac) I am doing this at work.
From the link:
\"For the vast majority of AT&T customers, this transition should be seamless, and their devices will automatically reflect the new time after Daylight Saving Time goes into effect. However, many data devices do not rely on network time and are preprogrammed with the old Daylight Saving Time change. To operate correctly in 2007, customers with these devices may be required to download a software update from the manufacturer's Web site.\"
I got that same SMS on 3/5/2007. It looks more like a case of delayed SMS. Also some phones pick up the time from the network (sometimes regularly, sometimes only when they start, sometimes it's configurable and users don't know the setting), some phones understand timezones and DST, others don't. Cingular just sends an SMS to whoever in their database owns a device that has a patch for it (PDAs).
My Cingular Treo can be configured to pick the network time or keep time itself, and depending on the network I'm on (legacy AT&T, Cingular, or local roaming), it might or might not get a correct network time. On Cingular, and with Orange in France, my Treo switches timezones with no problem (between Central, Eastern and European time), however while roaming in the Michigan Upper Peninsula, I get a garbage time from the network.
I received a pre-recorded phone call to my 8525 a few days before DST letting me know that I should go to www.cingular.com/dst2007 for information on how to patch my phone.
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@misskaz: You should be able to update without connecting to a desktop computer when you go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsupdate you should be presented with an option to download and install the update directly.
I called Cingular on Monday and they said Blackjacks weren't affected. I said \"then why is my clock off?\" I ended up doing the Microsoft Windows Mobile DST update which worked like a charm because it first installs on your PC (my Blackjack's a bit of a pill when it comes to moving files onto it): http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/daylightsaving/defa...
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I never got any txt from cingular about the DST change.
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Hmmm. I'm with Cingular and my phone (a Motorola - abt 18 months old) updated automatically -- I didn't even have to turn it off and on. It also updates automatically whenever I travel to a different time zone.
I have not received a text message.
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Phones have to be updated manually for DST? My 3-year-old phone did that automatically. It was a few hours late in updating but it did so without any intervention on my part.
TMobile sent a text to any of its customers running a KNOWN Windows Mobile device (I never got it cuz I don't have a TMo supported phone).
The Windows Mobile phones rely on their internal information to adjust the time settings, where as the majority of the other phone manufactures rely on network information to change the time.
This would potentially explain why people with phones other than Windows Mobile did not recieve a text.
I didn't receive such a message, but seeing how my phone is four-years-old (and I have auto-update setting for time/date turned off) I'm not surprised.
I do wonder, however, about why they did this. It's obviously not out of the goodness of their hearts, especially when it didn't arrive on-time to be of any use. I would urge you to check your bills diligently, for they might have charged you for that text/multimedia message.
At 15 cents per text message (went up from 10 cents), times 61 million subscribers (assuming nobody bought text message plans), that's a whopping $9,150,000 profit for a nice, friendly reminder. (Don't forget tax!)
Lame, they haven't sent me a text yet.