Week numbers 2020 - 2021

Hi,

I have had a couple of emails from users who have one of my watch faces which displays week number (‘ww’ field code in a ‘Digital Clock’ field on the watch face). On my watch face in GWS the default language for this field is English (United States).

They are commenting that the last week of 2020 should be week number 53, but the watch displays this week as week 01. I’ve done a little research on this and it seems that 2020 should indeed have 53 weeks.

Moving into 2021, this also means that the week numbers displayed in GWS on the watch face continue to be one week ahead. So week #1 in 2021 (3-9 Jan in the US) is displayed as week #2 in GWS, and I presume this will be the case on the actual watch too.

Note that if I change the default language for the ww field in GWS to be English (United Kingdom) for example, the last week in 2020 is indeed displayed as week 53 and the calendar looks right to me.

So I am wondering if this is an issue with the default US calendar?

Comments?

Rob

2 Likes

Hi @rob1585568856,
I have checked it on my watch 3 and found the issue as well. You may be interested to submit a bug report to the support team. Though it is not possible to get it resolved instantly but will be helpful for the upcoming years.

Azad

This is incorrect in GWS with US English chosen as well and affects Y as well as w an ww. This was a bug a few years ago with GWD and I wonder if it was fixed incorrectly.

I’ll create a bug report if you haven’t

Ron
Samsung Developer Program

Hi Ron,

Thanks for your reply. I’ve raised an issue for this, this afternoon.

Cheers,

Rob

Hi Rob,

I’ve been copied on your bug report and added the ICU standard reference. This may be an ICU library error it wouldn’t be the first time it was wrong.
I’m curious, what in particular do you use Week of Year for? it is basically for accounting use.

Ron
Samsung Developer Program

Was about to report the Year issue too as the date on my watch was showing the last few days as 2021 instead of 2020. Thanks Ron and Rob!

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Hi Ron,

I simply display the value on the watch face. Some people like to know what week of the year it is particularly of they have business or financial milestones associated with calendar weeks. As a project manager week number was always an important piece of information for tracking progress.

Cheers,

Rob

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I’m in the same situation too.
I am receiving several emails from users in Europe who have the wrong week calendar.
At the moment the only solution would be to insert two different versions of watch face … As we did years ago for the 12 and 24hr versions but this solution is not practicable.

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I’ve done some investigation and it appears to me that some European calendars are correct.

In the watch face I produce which is affected by this issue (ORB-04), I had only English (United States) selected as the language for the ‘week number’ field, so as an interim fix I’ve enabled some additional languages for week number, (also day number and year for completeness). Now for those European calendars which are correct this should resolve the issue. E.g. a User in the Netherlands with the phone language set to Dutch should, I believe, use the Dutch (Netherlands) calendar for the week number field.

But there is still the rest of the world to consider as the all other areas have incorrect week numbers.

After some testing, the following list of languages seem to have a correct local calendar: Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch (All), English (Ireland, United Kingdom), Estonian, Finnish, French (France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland), German (All), Greek (All), Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian (All), Polish, Portuguese (Portugal), Slovak, Spanish (Spain), Swedish.

Obviously I would encourage others to confirm that my logic is correct before taking any action!

Rob

2 Likes

Hi, one language is always default and will show for the unchecked ones.
Also note, that for some countries (languages) the week starts on Sunday, for others on Monday.
So I would allow all that work correctly, and maybe pick UK English as default.

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Great!

I set all languages (except Arabic and Chinese) and left US as default.
Everything seems to be working fine now.

Thank you!

Good to hear, although I think it’s only a partial fix. While many Euro countries will now be fine, the US and Latin America, for example, will still show the wrong week number.

Peter’s suggestion of setting English (United Kingdom) as the default language for the week number field (combined with de-selecting any languages with broken calendars such as English (United States)) would, I think, resolve the issue everywhere, except for the day that the week starts. In the UK and many other regions the week starts on Monday, but in the US it starts on Sunday, so that would still be wrong in the US in this example.

I guess it’s a judgement on the degree of “wrongness” that is acceptable.

Implementing the first solution would fix some Euro areas and need no further action once a patch from Samsung is available which fixes the broken calendars.

The second solution will fix the week number everywhere but not the week start day and a patch from Samsung would not impact this, so another update to the watch would be needed to re-enable those calendars previously deselected.

It’s getting a bit complicated. Sorry!

Rob

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I did this tests, after making the changes on GWS:

  • Changed language and date on the phone

American English / Sunday: correct first day of the week

Italian / Sunday: correct last day of the week

It seems to work for both the US and Europe

Am I wrong something?

Hi Matteo,

Well that’s interesting. Savvytime indicates that weeks are numbered differently in the USA to the rest of the world. Some online calendars agree with this while others don’t.

I thought that week numbers would be standard worldwide (ISO 8601), but now looking at this more closely I think perhaps you are right that the US calendar (and a number of other countries calendars) are different.

So this week (today being 5 Jan 2021) is week 2 in the USA and week 1 in most of Europe.

Perhaps therefore the addition of language support to the week number field as discussed earlier is all that is needed to resolve the issue.

Progress, I think!

Rob.

GWS appears to be correctly interpreting the calendar but not the ISO 8601 calendar.

https://www.calendar-12.com/week_number#:~:text=How%20Many%20Weeks%20Are%20In,366%20in%20a%20leap%20year).

A week is a time unit equal to seven days . Weeks within a given year are typically numbered starting from 1 . There are few week numbering systems used around the world. USA, Canada, most of Latin America, Japan, Israel, South Korea, among others, use a week numbering system (called North American in our Calculator) in which the first week (numbered 1) of any given year is the week which contains January 1st. The first day of a week is Sunday and Saturday is the last.

Most of European and Asian countries use a standardized ISO 8601 week date system in which the week with the number 1 is the first week which contains the first Thursday of January . In this system the first day of the week is Monday. It may happen that the first week of the year contains a few last days from the previous year. For example, the first week of the 2014 starts on December 30, 2013 (Monday) and ends on January 5, 2014 (Sunday).

Most Middle East countries use a calendar system (called Islamic in our Calculator) in which the week with the number 1 in any given year is the one that contains January 1st. In this system Saturday is the first day of a week and Friday is the last.

Having said that I looked at some accounting calendars and that listed last week as Week 53, 2020.
Weird.

Ron
Samsung Developer Program

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Is there no solution to this problem?
I wonder if there is any solution.
Do I have to use it as it is until GWD is updated?

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I’ve research and researched this and feel I’m kind of an authority.

It is not an issue so there is no solution. For Gregorian calendars the “US Calendar” used in Most of America’s, Korea and some other places has the first week of the year the week with Jan 1 in it. Other parts of the world have the first week of the year the week with 4 days of the year in it. Some calendars have Lunar new year so it is in February this year.

Accounting software uses a different system that is pretty standard world wide.

Ron
Samsung Developer Program

Week of year should work accordingly in each country. Otherwise, this feature is not available.
Isn’t it not possible to produce watch faces separately in each country?

So as discussed above, what I did was to make sure that the “week no” field has all languages selected and the watch automatically displays the correct week number for each locality.

Hi.
I did try changing language and regions. Nothing helps. Watch still showing 1 week ahead. On the phone week number is ok.