> The reason your phone (that's set to use "New York" as a timezone) knows to change the UTC offset from -4 to 05 on the first Sunday of November is because it has received a firmware update at some point since 2006. A standalone device from before 2006 can not know that the spring forward/fall back dates in the US changed, unless it's updated.

Fair enough, good point - I didn't think about that.

> Your statement "None of those require firmware updates. It's quite nice to never mess with the clocks and have everything just be correct" seems naive at best.

I never said that, possibly you're replying to a different person than intended.