Question

Do Android Devices use the network time protocol (NTP) to synchronize the time?

In my Device-Settings I see a checkbox with the following text “synchronize with network”, but I don’t know if they are using NTP.

I need this for my Bachelor Thesis for which I use GPS. To get an accurate GPS-signal the receiver should have an exact clock.

I have found this blog-entry on the web, but I’m not sure if he tells the truth: Speeding up NTP, GPS Lock in Android

Answer 1

I know about Android ICS that it uses a custom service called: NetworkTimeUpdateService. This service also implements a NTP time synchronization via the NtpTrustedTime singleton.

In NtpTrustedTime the default NTP server is requested from the Android system string source:

final Resources res = context.getResources();

final String defaultServer = res.getString(
                                com.android.internal.R.string.config_ntpServer);

If the automatic time sync option in the system settings is checked and no NITZ time service is available then the time will be synchronized with the NTP server from com.android.internal.R.string.config_ntpServer.

To get the value of com.android.internal.R.string.config_ntpServer you can use the following method:

    final Resources res = this.getResources();
    final int id = Resources.getSystem().getIdentifier(
                       "config_ntpServer", "string","android");
    final String defaultServer = res.getString(id);