Getting the time right the Sony Ericsson way

Why are most of the appointments in my phone one hour early compared to my mac, I wondered? I recently bought the Sony Ericsson W760i, dropped it - not very hard! - and got a repair under guarantee. In other words, it is a somewhat delicate phone that should be treated with caution, but otherwise it works rather well. So why are my appointments one hour off?

It's the daylight savings time, stupid, I hear you say! You are correct, daylight savings time was not configured correctly. I had configured Time and date, of course, but the phone demands something really peculiar from you to get the time right when syncronizing. If you have a recent Sony Ericsson model, this may apply to you too:

When you configure Time and date (under Menu - Settings - General), you are asked to select your timezone. I selected GMT+1, which is my timezone. Correct? No, you need to read the manual, which tells you that "if you select a city, My time zone also updates the time when daylight saving time changes." Copenhagen is the right answer. I chose Copenhagen as my time zone, and my appointments are now synchronized correctly.

The moral lesson might be - as we used to say when I worked in IT - RTFM: Read the f**cking manual. In this case it turned out to be the solution, but most manuals are so lousy it won't work. I think the real lesson is that user interface design is a major factor in my life, whether I like it or not. In cases such as this one, the user interface on my phone is a major time sink. There is very little I can do about it, except complain in a blog post. So there! Hope this helps someone and that Sony Ericsson listens.