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TL;DR: is it possible to manually force an update of the time-zone database on a reasonably modern Android phone?

I have a Samsung Galaxy S9+, running Android 10, and one of the things that lives on my home screen is a dual clock showing the time in Mexico City. (The widget comes from Digital Clock Widget, the developers of which have informed me that they pull the time-zone information for a specific location from the local Android device's database.)

Since last April, the time on the Mexico City clock displays incorrectly. As of this year, Mexico no longer uses DST, but my device's database seems not to have received an update with the news.

Is it possible to force an update of this database to pull the updated DST rules? Is it possible to do so without requiring root access? (I'm aware of Time Zone Updater and other apps that do require root, but that would break other apps.) If it's possible, how can I do it?

(This related question asks how to do the same, but on Android 4.2, and I understand that the timezone handling is radically changed from those days.)

E.P.
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  • According to the documentation you should receive an updated Time Zone Data module from Google: https://source.android.com/docs/core/permissions/timezone-rules?hl=en#timezone-apex Not sure how often this happens and how to manually trigger it. – Robert Aug 01 '23 at 16:48
  • You can check your system via adb which apex modules are installed: adb shell pm list packages --apex-only. – Robert Aug 01 '23 at 16:54
  • Samsung S9+ was launched in 2018 and no longer gets security updates: https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-galaxy-s9-end-of-software-support-3149055/ On launch the S9+ had Android 8 so probably continued to use the older APK based TZ update which was completely under OEM control. Sadly I expect only by rooting your device can the TZ data be updated, see: https://stackoverflow.com/q/76068054/295004 – Morrison Chang Aug 02 '23 at 06:37

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