In Liberia, we’ve been running into a problem around collecting time stamped data. Our users are 100% offline. CHAs often drain the entire battery on the phone, which resets the date, usually to 01/01/2017. This means that timestamps are inaccurate and makes it much more difficult to conduct data analysis.
Right now, the only way to fix this is to manually update the date/time on the users’ phone. With 4,000 users in remote areas, this is super unfeasible on a regular basis. Anyone have any brilliant ideas on how we could solve this?
I guess this is unlikely, but are they ever connected to the phone network (not mobile data)? As the phones can be set to automatically pick up the date/time as provided by the phone network.
Unfortunately not. Right now 100% are offline, and will never connect the device to mobile data or WiFi. Some will eventually connect to a mobile network, but it’s safe to assume that at leas half (2,000 users) will never connect to a phone network.
Maybe the app could check that the current date set in the device is not before the latest recorded activity, at least to identify the situation and inform the user so he can update the date/time… the app could even open the date/time settings screen (https://stackoverflow.com/a/9434344), but ultimately the user would still be responsible for manually updating it.