Android get current eastern standard time

Question

I want to get the eastern standard time /EST current time but it keeps on showing my current time... Any idea what I am doing wrong?

DateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy.MM.dd G 'at' HH:mm:ss z");
        TimeZone utc = TimeZone.getTimeZone("America/New_York");
        GregorianCalendar gc = new GregorianCalendar(utc);
        Date now = gc.getTime();
        String strDateString = format.format(now);

Answer 1

The Date class is intended to reflect coordinated universal time (UTC), so it does not reflect timezone you use in GregorianCalendar. Also by default SimpleDateFormat uses system default timezone and if you want to override it you should do it explicitly:

DateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy.MM.dd G 'at' HH:mm:ss z");
TimeZone la = TimeZone.getTimeZone("America/Los_Angeles");
format.setTimeZone(la);

Another option is to switch to Joda Time library:

DateTimeZone la = DateTimeZone.forTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("America/Los_Angeles"));
DateTimeFormat.forPattern(dateTimeFormat).withZone(la).print(System.currentTimeMillis());