Massive smartphone failure in Ukraine: the cause is known
5 November 20:00
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine explained why there was a massive failure of smartphones on November 5. This is reported by Komersant ukrainskyi with reference to the relevant post on the official Telegram channel of the department.
In the course of repulsing the air attacks of the Russian occupiers, electronic warfare means are used.
In particular, means of spoofing GPS satellite navigation coordinates are used. A side effect is a disruption in the precise time system used by mobile phones in the automatic time adjustment mode.
“It is worth disabling the automatic time update mode in the phone and taking into account that during air raids, the accuracy of satellite navigation systems may be disrupted,” the General Staff advised Ukrainians.
What preceded it
On Tuesday, November 5, Kyiv residents began to complain en masse on social media about malfunctions of their smartphones. The technology began to incorrectly determine geolocation when using maps. Thus, for some users, the smartphone replaced the “Kyiv” location with “residence” in Voronezh, Minsk or Kursk.
In addition, the system that calculated the time also failed. During the last large-scale air raid in Kyiv, Ukrainians’ phones started showing the time 1 hour off the real time.
What to do if GPS shows the wrong location or time?
For iPhone: go to Settings, select General, and then Date & Time. The correct time zone will be selected automatically.
For Android: go to Settings, select General, then Date and time.
In order to solve the problem with time jumps, Ukrainians are advised to disable the automatic time adjustment mode on their phones.
