Your phone's clock is your default time.
Think about when the last time you used a wall clock or even a public clock pole/tower or something. My brain doesn't even register them anymore, I just look at my phone and reset brain to whatever magic hand box says.
To think there used to be a time where you had to physically go outside and look at a clock tower if you wanted accurate ish local time
edit: hourly workers who live by the time card, disregard this post
26 replies
I go days without looking at a phone.
I use clocks all the time - it's way faster to look at a clock than pull my phone out.
Its even faster to simply look at a wall clock than the clock on my phone when I'm using the phone, since the fint is so small and digital.
Analog clocks are just faster to read, for me - I don't have to think about "what do these numbers mean".
Analog clocks are just a better analog for the passing of time.
Cant argue with this.
But
Is what i faintly ask myself when i do look at a analog clock.
In digital, the numbers are just numbers, 9:42 is 9:42 while in analog 9 can mean 9 or 45.
“It is almost a quarter before 10” is a sentence i would need to think twice to understand even when well pronounced from a vocal clear distance.
Pretty sure it all depends on what your used to and dealing with a delay when facing the “other” formulation. No real winners.
Watches: Am I a joke to you?
Yes because it is a reproduction, with much error, of your phone time for the vast majority of watch owners.
I have a bunch of mechanical watches that are varying degrees of inaccurate by their nature, but I do have one that isn’t inaccurate at all. A square Gshock that uses six band radio towers to update itself nightly. Just as accurate as a phone, and I use it as my reference to set my mechanical watches.
So there’s at least that alternative. Silly I know, because I’ve always got my phone close by, but I just think they’re neat.
And what time do you use to set your watch?
Maybe reread my comment? The Gshock watch sets itself daily to the atomic clock via radio broadcast. I use that watch as my reference to set the others when they’re a little off.
Edit: here’s the link from Casio explaining the technology https://gshock.casio.com/intl/technology/radio/
They use that guy’s phone to set the atomic clock though, checkmate atheist
What error are we talking about here?
I don't think most people have a seconds clock up on their phone when they set their watch to their phone time (also meaning OP is correct that phone time is base time for people).
That means they aren't syncing the seconds hand and there is ± 60 seconds of error. Also probably some error in ± 1 minute of hand placement error, especially for small watch faces, plus mechanical timing error for all but the high end mechanical watches. There are tons of sources of error. NTP time is accurate to the 10s of milliseconds, so around 3 orders of magnitude difference for most people.
I still wear a wristwatch. Not as jewelry, a cheap one that tells time. Pulling the black obelisk out of pocket just to see the time is burdensome and slow.
Not to mention a fresh opportunity to drop the damn thing.
I've worn a mechanical wristwatch a while ago until it broke (it originally was my grandfather's), and recently I got that urge to wear one again, so I bought a cheap automatic mechanical one. Displaying the current date is also a pretty useful feature because I keep forgetting the numbers 15 seconds after seeing them.
My default time is thinking it's only 15 minutes beyond the last time I noticed what time it was.
Example: I wake up at 11, take my dogs out, watch 15 minutes of video, dogs come begging to go out again, I tell them "it's only been like 15 minutes," check the time and somehow 2-3 hours have gone by.
I never look at my phone for the time, it's inconvenient to get out every time I want to check the time, but a wall clock is just there to glance over at.
I doubt I look at the time on my phone more than a couple of times per week. I have wall clocks all over the house and a watch on my wrist. Almost all of them, including my watch, automatically correct themselves using the WWV time signal from the National Bureau of Standards.
I don't have anything against using my phone, but it's easier to glance at the wall or my wrist than to get out my phone when I want to know the time.
My default time is based on my mechanical wrist watch. Why should I dig out my phone outside of actually getting a phone call?
For you, maybe, but for me it's my desktop's clock -- with my microwave as the fallback (e.g. when I'm playing a fullscreen game).
I basically only check the time on my phone if I'm out and about (which is... rare) or when I'm getting up/going to bed -- which also serves as a check for messages (since I have my phone on Do Not Disturb 24/7).
I actually bought a physical wall clock earlier this year thinking that I could stick it somewhere more convenient to read than the microwave, but the ticking was too damned annoying.
If you still have the clock you can get a replacement "sweep" movement instead of the more common "step" movement.
You can buy them online from all sorts of places for ~15 dollars, e.g. clockshop.
My smart watch recently died and I found myself quickly glancing at my bare wrist then surveying my surroundings for a clock only to check my phone as a last resort. Before my smart watch, my phone was my default but I'd still see clocks, read them... and then check my phone immediately after.
Things like flyers, posters, communication boards etc, have completely blended into the scenery for me for as long as I can remember. Unless the active task is waiting with little to no distractions or entertainment I won't notice them.
i look at my wall clock quite a lot, mainly because it's easier for me to visualise the "distance" of time with it. and hour on my phone is not much different from 5min
Hmm. Can't remember that we used to go outside and walk to a clock tower just to set the time.
In the past, there was a phone number you could call on the landline which would tell you the exact time.
POP-CORN !
At the bus stop. Yeah the timetable and my mobile say bus in 1 min, but I really need to validate my phone is correct because I don't SEE the bus. Where is it????
I have a solar powered wrist watch. I mostly go by that because I set it 2 mins ahead of phone time so I arrive a few minutes early even though I know I have it set fast.
For timers I use music as a timer. Need to have a 6 minute shower in the morning, I put on Bohemian Rhapsody and I'm scrubbing my feet then rinsing off before they call for Bismillah.
"Alexa, what time is it?" is pretty common in my house. I do use my phone a lot for it, but I'm also more likely to get distracted if I do.