Travelling with Time Zone Support

[gadgeTT]

Ok, I've read dozens of posts regarding the Time Zone Support feature of the iPhone, but still am confused.

I live in Austin, TX (Central time). I have my time zone set properly in the Settings - General - Date & Time section.

I am flying to the Eastern Time zone this Friday. Lets say that a flight leaves Austin at 11am (local, Central Time) and arrives in Miami (local, Eastern Time) at 2pm, and another flight leaves at 4pm (Miami time) and arrives at 8pm (local, also Eastern time). How do I enter that appointments in my iPhone so that when I land in Miami and set my phone to Eastern time, all the times show up right?

The way I used to do it on my Windows Mobile phone is that I would enter the time into my calendar so that the time in my calendar reflected where I was at the time I set the listing.

In the above example, I would put the first flight in as 11a - 1pm, since 1pm central is the same time as 2pm eastern. The second flight would be 3pm - 7pm because 3pm central is 4pm eastern and 7pm central is 8pm eastern. That way, I would land in Miami, set my phone for eastern time, all the appointments would get shifted 1hr and thus all would be set right.

How do I do it on my iPhone so that the times are correct when I (and hence the phone) change time zones?

Thanks!

[Tinman]

Originally Posted by gadgeTT

Ok, I've read dozens of posts regarding the Time Zone Support feature of the iPhone, but still am confused.

I live in Austin, TX (Central time). I have my time zone set properly in the Settings - General - Date & Time section.

I am flying to the Eastern Time zone this Friday. Lets say that a flight leaves Austin at 11am (local, Central Time) and arrives in Miami (local, Eastern Time) at 2pm, and another flight leaves at 4pm (Miami time) and arrives at 8pm (local, also Eastern time). How do I enter that appointments in my iPhone so that when I land in Miami and set my phone to Eastern time, all the times show up right?

The way I used to do it on my Windows Mobile phone is that I would enter the time into my calendar so that the time in my calendar reflected where I was at the time I set the listing.

In the above example, I would put the first flight in as 11a - 1pm, since 1pm central is the same time as 2pm eastern. The second flight would be 3pm - 7pm because 3pm central is 4pm eastern and 7pm central is 8pm eastern. That way, I would land in Miami, set my phone for eastern time, all the appointments would get shifted 1hr and thus all would be set right.

How do I do it on my iPhone so that the times are correct when I (and hence the phone) change time zones?

Thanks!

You can do it either way with the iPhone.

I personally hate having to figure out what time it is going to be when putting my flight info into a calendar app. So I don't. If I have a 12 PM flight out of Vegas and a 4 PM connecting flight in Houston I will schedule that connecting flight in at 4 PM, and not 2 PM.

As you probably already know the way to control this is via:
Settings-->General-->Date & Time-->Time Zone Support

When it is "On" calendar entries ignore the time zone when the iPhone is set to get the time from the carrier. This is how I have mine setup. When "On" appointments will not change their times when the iPhone changes into another time-zone (but not if you manually change the time zone in settings, leave that alone!).

When it is "Off" the calendar will auto-adjust appointments as the iPhone moves into different time zones. I find this a bit dangerous as one time my WinMob device did this unexpectedly and I got stuck in Tulsa, OK for the night. Never again do I want a device auto-changing appointment times: I want to set them and let them be.

Note: Be sure the time zone is setup correctly on the iPhone before setting appointments with it (it defaults to CA). Even with Time Zone Support On the calendar app still adjusts appointments to the time zone set on the iPhone. So if my iPhone was set to CST and my desktop PC to PST the appointments would change all of the time.

For the record I find it much easier (with time zone support ON) to deal with appointments on my iPhone than I did on my Winmob devices...


--
Mike