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If you have a Smartphone, tablet, or other marvel of technology running the Android operating system, you may know that the system time is usually off by about 15 seconds. Before the leap second conference last month, I had no idea that this was because Android uses the GPS system time for the basis of its display (probably more of an anomaly than an intentional choice), and GPS time is 15 seconds ahead of UTC/GMT because there have been 15 leap seconds inserted since it was defined (thanks to Steve Allen of Lick Observatory for supplying this bit of trivia about Android!). It's a rather reliable 15 second difference, +/- 1 or 2 seconds, on all of the Android phones I've checked, but still...

Tonight I did a little searching and found a nice Android "app" for time. It's called "UTC Time". It's quite simple and can display "Device Time" alongside "Internet Time" (UTC). Unlike many implementations running as scripts through web pages, it re-synchronizes with online time servers roughly every ten seconds. Compared to WWV broadcasts, I would say that the time it displays is accurate to within a tenth of a second.

-FER

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