Apple Watches down under struggle with switch to daylight saving time

Oct. 8 (UPI) -- Apple Watch owners in Australia were thrown for a loop over the weekend when their devices tried to cope with a time change.

Experts said the Series 4 watches went into a reboot loop when Australia changed to daylight saving time, a switch that consumed the battery and made the watches almost impossible to recharge or restart manually.

The problem lasted for a full day before the smart watches re-adapted as normal.

The new Series 4 watches have a display that includes a lot of information. The watch faces show 24 hours in a day, but experts say the missing hour could be creating a software spin.

Some owners had success removing the Inforgraph Modular face using the companion Watch iPhone app. Others did hard factory resets. Leaving it on the charger could also cause problems for the watch's long-term battery health, experts said.

Apple will likely issue a software update to fix the problem, but it's unknown whether it will be in place before more scheduled time changes. The United States will fall back an hour at 2 a.m. on Nov. 4.

One Australian who lives on the edge of different time zones said he experienced a different problem, in which the Apple Watch displays different times depending on the location of the cell tower.

That issue was complicated by the fact that one time zone observes daylight time and the other doesn't.