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Do smartphones get their time from GPS?

• kube-system 5y ago
  I believe they usually get it from the network.
  • riobard 5y ago
    That was my impression as well but now I’m puzzled about why. Since most smartphones have GPS builtin why not get time from GPS?
    • becauseiam 5y ago
      Mobile basebands already get the local time and UTC offset when connecting to a tower, there's no need to power up the GPS antenna and receiver separately.
    • jlgaddis 5y ago
      Mostly because 1) your phone is getting time from the tower anyways (they have to be closely sync'd) and 2) GPS doesn't always work very well -- especially indoors.
      • riobard 5y ago
        So every cell tower runs an NTP server?