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Lu, you wrote:
"I guess I stand corrected on cellphones telling time."

This year, it all depends. I have two cell phones turned on at the moment.
One is a four-year-old flip phone. The other is a Windows Mobile touch phone
about four months old. Only the latter has phone service (Sprint, by the
way). I kept the other when I upgraded, evewn though it technically has no
service, because I discovered that it still informs me when I have
voicemail, and more importantly, it gets network time, so it makes a very
nice alarm clock. The old phone's time is perfect to a fraction of a second.
The new phone's time is typically off by ten seconds or so. Clearly, these
two devices are getting the time from the cell phone network in different
ways. Also, the older phone adjusts to the time zone it's in whether I like
it or not, and if I'm out of service range, it loses the time. The new one
will remain on my chosen time zone even if I cross time zone boundaries, and
it maintains the time when I'm off the network.

The way I see it, very accurate cell phone time had little value to most
users. The ability to adjust the time and maintain control over zone changes
is more in line with the way most people have used watches traditionally.
I'm sure we all know someone who sets a watch ahead five minutes so that
they've "never late". On the other hand, how many people need to know the
time to better than the nearest minute? Navigators... Ebay bidders maybe...
not many other people. So the highly accurate time that became an accidental
feature of cell phone service (at least with some providers) a few years ago
has been lost to evolution. But believe me, I wouldn't trade my new phone's
features for anything. How could I ever live without broadband Internet
while walking down a street, or sitting at the beach, or having dinner in a
restaurant? ;-)

 -FER
PS: Final irony: my old phone that keeps very accurate time has no seconds
display. The new phone that's "only close" displays seconds.



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