Neil deGrasse Tyson ( wikipedia link ) is Joshua Topolsky’s guest on the current episode of On the Verge, where they talk about NASA, space, and gadgets. During the interview Dr. Tyson shares an interesting tidbit about how iPhones and Android-based phones display the time…
The iPhone has the correct time unlike the Android-based phones…The bulk of the Androids get their time from GPS satellites. The timekeeping system for GPS satellites was defined up to 1982. And since 1982, 15 leap-seconds have been added to civil time. And those leap-seconds are not included in the Android timekeeping because they’re getting their time directly from GPS, whereas the iPhone compensates for this, puts those 15 seconds back in, and has therefore the correct time. As a result, most Android phones are exactly 15 seconds too fast
.
Jump to 15 minutes, 20 seconds to hear Dr.Tyson explain it himself…
