[Ekaros]

Just looking at those maps should explain part of it. There isn't enough coverage. So you end up with poor experience with substantial amount of people who do not get good signal.

This would likely result in lot of returns, warranty claims and so on. Just not worth it in general.

[Gud]

I have a 15+ years old G-Shock with this feature. When I was in Afghanistan in 2010, I would still occasionally get this signal. I suspect these coverage maps are quite conservative.

[Ekaros]

Occasionally isn't good. It either has to work consistently or not at all. If someone has wrong understanding what the time is and their clock goes to "wrong" time occasionally it is bad.

And on other hand if marketed people expect such features to work. Even indoors or in basement. Next to window facing right direction in lucky meteorological conditions is tough ask for majority. Geeks will geek out when it works once in a bluemoon. But regular people expect it to work every day or even every week.

[Gud]

I don't understand your point. My watch was not marketed to function in Afghanistan at all. It was made clear the towers are in the US(IIRC two of them), Berlin and Japan.

And I think few people expect their wrist watch to synchronize over radio in a basement... And if they are, they need to understand radio better.

There is little drift on my G-shock anyway. Probably it would still be extremely accurate if it hadn't synced at all during the 7 months I was there.

[fomine3]

Possibly the US military base had radio tower even though it's not their territory?

[namibj]

Or the German signal in light/thin buildings. Afghanistan is far, but not _that_ far.

[JADev62096]

Completely disagree. All clocks and watches have a degree of uncertainty. Even a once a quarter time sync is enough to improve the accuracy. If you want to be sure you have the correct time, then you check and set against a reference source or press the button to see when last received. What is the harm that would be caused by an occasional sync?

[Cthulhu_]

I disagree; a typical quartz watch only has a few seconds of drift per month, so if it only syncs once every few months it's still fine for most wrist watch applications. I never need second accuracy when I want to know what time it is.

[Ekaros]

So do you move microwave oven around on extension cord so often it will sync?

[exitb]

I live ~700km from DCF77 and never get the signal indoors. Which is unfortunate in this case, as the watch tries to synchronize at night, when I’m usually at home.

[jhoechtl]

Place your watch away from phone chargers. I live more than 700 km away and get it reliably every night on a small wrist watch once it put my watch away from the phone charger.

[spookie]

You can try doing it on clear nights, and outdoors, manually. It works most of the time for me if I'm back on my home country.

[noAnswer]

> So you end up with poor experience

...as opposed to what? How is a blinking 12:00 a better experience?