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vivoactive 3 Series Randomly shows Wrong Time

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Randomly shows Wrong Time

Sheppus over 7 years ago

A few minutes ago I checked my VA3 and it was 14:57, when I was sure it's well pass 15:00. Checked my phone and it was 15:17. The watch and phone ticked over to the next minute at the same time, so the watch was exactly 20 minutes slow. Restarted the watch didn't fix the issue, so I opened GMC (Android) and was going to check if there's a time zone setting, but while it was syncing the time on the watch fixed itself. Not sure what causes the problem but now it's hard to trust the watch's primary feature, telling the time, if it's correct or not. What if I need to set an alarm?

GMC was last updated 5 days ago. It just received another update, not sure if the last version was the cause.

Does anyone know if the watch get its time from the phone or GPS? How often does it sync?
????
Com'on Garmin, stop breaking the software...

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

I was wondering on this too, as the sync with phone isn't 100% accurate...even tho it does sync.
last night while I was syncing some other pieces to atomic time...i realized there is no way to manually set the garmin down to the exact second.
so while the garmin did sync with my phone that is almost with atomic time...the garmin was curiously around 30secs slower...
even after multiple syncs..it will just sync to the right minute... but still consistently always around 30secs slower.

so looks like garmin connect only syncs accurately down to the minute.
will try again later with gps sync to see if it goes down to the second.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

The VA3 gets it's time from GPS. I don't know why the OP is having their issue, but Everdying, the atomic clock and your VA3 being 30 secs off are both correct. As confusing as this sounds, the link below explains why.

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/technical-articles/gps-times-atomic-clock-frequencies-increasing-accuracy-of-gps/

0 chunkywizard over 7 years ago

I just looked at the time on my 935 vs that link, It’s showing UTC not GPS time, looks like Garmin corrects against this error.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

My VAHR gets into this funky state sometimes, and I have found the only way to fix it is
1. Menu -> Settings -> System -> Restore Default to basically nuke everything on the device
2. Connect with cable to computer and use Garmin Express to do a sync to install any updates and fix device Bluetooth connectivity (I am unable to pair my VAHR with anything until I do this step)
3. Unplug from cable and connect to Garmin Connect on phone
4. Adjust settings on device as desired

A royal pain, but at least the time is correct again. This has happened a couple times now, and I am beginning to suspect some kind of bug in wired connections after the device as been in use for awhile.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

The article made mention of satellite availability, so that must factor in somehow. I just compared my 935 time to UTC and I was 72 seconds behind. I just went outside (rainy & cloudy here in the Pacific NW) and synced my 935's clock to GPS in settings. Now I'm 6 seconds behind UTC. I just tried this twice.

0 Sheppus over 7 years ago

The VA3 gets it's time from GPS. I don't know why the OP is having their issue, but Everdying, the atomic clock and your VA3 being 30 secs off are both correct. As confusing as this sounds, the link below explains why.

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/technical-articles/gps-times-atomic-clock-frequencies-increasing-accuracy-of-gps/

I think it's a software issue, because if VA3 solely relies on GPS for the time, simply launching GMC shouldn't fix the initial issue.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

ok, i just sync with gps... and the time down to the seconds is almost spot on with atomic.
so best assumption is that garmin connect is bugged as it only syncs to the minute.