Stock Notes app displays American date

[jeffg1]

On my Vodafone Smart Platinum 7, the stock Notes app displays the date in American MM/DD/YYYY date format instead of the system date format, set in settings as DD/MM/YYYY.

The app should use the system setting, not its own hard-coded one. There is no means in app settings to change this, and there is no contact information to ask for a fix.

[hrym]

I'm not familiar with that app, but I've noticed that, if you use the Today function in Google Sheets, it picks up a US time zone rather than the one in system settings.  I suspect that something similar is going on here - although it's a stock app, it may be bought in and picking up its details from somewhere else.

Whether this can be changed in a future update I'm not sure, but it's a question worth asking.

[jeffg1]

Thanks for your reply. My main problem is I don't know how to contact the authors of this app to request the change. If an app has an entry in Google Play store, you can leave a comment, but since this one is built into my phone (no Uninstall option, only Disable) this is not an option.

It's a pretty minor request, but the app should have been written properly in the first place. I feel strongly about this because a large part of my working life was spent working for an American computer company in a department dealing with internationalisation. A major success was to persuade them that hard coding the ambiguous numerical American date format was just not on.

Perhaps I should ask Vodafone Chat. Or perhaps the Tech Team will come along and respond to this post.

[hrym]

Yes, the Tech Team should indeed pick this up.  I'm unable to comment (as I said) because I don't have that phone or the app.   I entirely agree that picking the time and date up from the system makes complete sense, but it's surprising how often it doesn't to software writers! :smileysurprised:  Google sheets is a case in point (it even does it with an xlsx file that's opened in the app).  Any device will have some kind of clock and (I assume that) there's a pretty standard way of accessing it without compromising compatibility across different ones.   It's possible that it's a "phone-home" mechanism to alert the writer to usage, I suppose.

If the Tech Team could tell us what the original app is (it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that it's been re-badged), then it would be possible to contact the developer direct.  Just hang on - the team read all posts and will respond in due course.

[Retired-NathanT]

Hi @jeffg1

We advise getting in touch with a member of our Live Chat team here and they'll be able to look into this for you.

Nathan

[hrym]

@jeffg1Try what Nathan suggests, but I'd be very surprised if Live Chat have any further info, though you may be lucky...   If you aren't, drop a message back here.   It's probably a question of getting this escalated to the team responsible for the app, who may be able to give feedback to the developer.

A further thought: in the app's menu, is there an "about" option that may tell you more about its provenance?

[jeffg1]

I haven't got on to Live Chat yet, but will do so. Options are very sparse - only how to sort and no About.

Thanks for all replies so far.

[hrym]

Actually, isn't the American format YYYY/MM/DD?

I wonder whether this isn't trying to use the (eg) "January 1 2017" style, but falling down because your system doesn't allow for months to be spelled out in full (or isn't set that way if there's an option).  If you pull down the notification blind, do you get the date and time there?  That would show the system format.  I think most of my devices have display options in the Time & Date section of the main Settings menu.

Does the app show the time anywhere?   If so, and it's GMT, then it's using Uk time, and possibly the system clock into the bargain.

My Google Sheets issue not only uses a US time zone, but displays YYYY/MM/DD.

[jeffg1]

No that's not American date format - that's a standard unambiguous format which is used by astronomers among others.

American date format is MM/DD/YYYY which is totally illogical, but worse still is ambiguous. They use 9/11/2001 to mean September 11th, 2001, whereas we initially think of 9th November. Except it's such an infamous date that that is an exception. But you get the idea.

If I have two notes, one dated 10/09/2016 and the other 10/11/2016, were they posted two months apart (as you or I would assume), or two days apart as would actually be the case?

There's a fascinating Wikipedia entry here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country

Edit: incidentally the time on my phone now is displayed as you would expect as 13:56 and the short date is TUE, 15 NOV

[hrym]

As a matter of interest, does the app also display the time?  If so, is it the system time or another time zone?   If it's the former, then the app is probably using the system date but converting it.  If it's the latter, it's using a time server somewhere else, which is odd, unless it's (as I suggested earlier) tracking usage by phoning home.