12-hour world clock

Vlad Simionescu

About this app

The best watch available today, right on your phone or tablet
- about 100% accurate (if you sync your device with a time server, which is very easy, see Settings / Date & time / Automatic date & time)
- shows the time anywhere on the globe
- and it looks good too.

Highlights:
- world time at a glance
- stylish clock skins for your Android device: simple elegant (standard and silver), Big Ben clock, religious clock (christian, islamic and buddhist), flower clock, kitties clock, zodiac clock, snakes clock
- the app that turns your phone into a beautiful pocket watch
- optionally shown on the Android lock screen (recommended), see details below
- for now the app is in English only
- it has no special permissions (for instance it cannot read the hard disk), this can be checked; so it's safe for privacy

!! Important warning: Showing the clock on the lock screen (SOLS) is probably the coolest app feature. But it does increase the battery consumption. Based on a few tests I've done on my own devices, I estimate that on a normally used phone the increase is about 10%. Which is rather little; it means that for instance, if you normally charge your phone every 5 days, with SOLS active you'll have to do it every 4 1/2 days. Of course on some devices it can be more. If you find that it's too big for your taste, the app is free so you know what you have to do. (Or you can just disable SOLS; then the battery consumption will come back to normal. By default it is disabled. )
See more details about SOLS below and in the app help.

This app is mainly a shortcut to a site that provides a 12-hour world clock.
This is an original design for a world clock, that features some 50 city names written on a normal (analog) 12-hour clock face, based on their time at any given moment. When the hour changes, the position of the towns on the clock face changes accordingly. Thus, the position on the clock face gives the time for each city. To distinguish between AM and PM time, a simple color scheme is used.
The fact that the clock face is a regular 12-hour one is novel. Up to this app there were (and still are) 24-hour world clocks in use, but obviously they're much more cumbersome.
See the app help for a detailed explanation of how it works.
The time shown by the clock is based on the system time and time zone settings.
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If you enable the show on lock screen (SOLS) option (by default it is disabled), the app draws the world clock on the lock screen.
This is in effect a live wallpaper, though technically it isn't one, but it acts like one. That's because I found that the live wallpaper technology has limitations, it doesn't work well on many devices. I hope the way I did it it will work on most.
If you need to see the cities bigger, you can press on the LS notification (if you enabled notifications for the app). It will bring you directly to the app window (after you supply a fingerprint or password to unlock the phone). There you have the usual zoom in / orientation change options to enlarge the display.
Note: The lock screen clock display (if selected) is offline, it will work also without an Internet connection.
The position (height) of the clock on the lock screen can be changed to fit your needs.
See details in the help for all these points.
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This app is especially handy for seeing the world time on smartphones and tablets. As said above, it can even show it on the lock screen, and then quickly get you to the app window where you have more features.
It also provides support (hints and maps) for easily finding the time zone / representative city of any place in the world.
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There are 12 clock styles, they are listed in the Highlights section above and shown in the app entry's pictures. For most of them there's a dark face and a light face version.

Ratings and reviews

I installed the 12-hour world clock because my watch was giving me the wrong time.

Excellence

Very fine

What's new

- New improved way of showing the clock on the lock screen. It's practically a lock screen live wallpaper, though not technically one, but it acts like one.
- Some revamping of the user interface.