NavList:

Don,

The offset of system time in Android had been about 15 seconds fast. This is equal to the GPS Time offset (it's the number of leap seconds that have been added from some starting date through early 2012). But is that a coincidence? When I first learned about this relatively fixed offset last year (I didn't know previously that it was always 15 +/-1), I was told that it was "definitely" due to the fact that the Android OS was reading the time data incorrectly and reporting GPS Time instead of standard time. But I am skeptical. I looked into the issue for quite a while, and I could not find anyone who had actually verified this. There were lots of second hand accounts all referring back to one source. After the June leap second, I looked for evidence that the offset had changed, and all I can say is "maybe". Another possibility is that the offset was simply designed in at an early stage of development in Android in order to cancel out a bootup time in a very early Android device. I can imagine an engineer suggesting "let's through in a nice round 15 seconds so the time synchs up better after the xyz delay during bootup". There was no rush to fix it no matter what. In my new phone, the system time is now slow by one second on average, instead of 15 seconds fast on average in my older Android phone.

-FER

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