Plagued by the iPhone alarm bug? iOS 4.2 will fix that. [Now with video proof]

Updates at the foot of the page.

At the beginning of the week, thousands of European iPhone owners suddenly found themselves being woken up an hour later than usual after their Apple device had failed to take into account the move to Daylight Savings Time.

It appears that although the iPhone automatically adjusted itself to accomodate the hour time difference, recurring alarms were not, leading to late wake-up alarms and many missed appointments.

Surprisingly, Apple was already aware of the bug. The company acknowledged the error when the clocks changed in Australia but didn’t issue a fix to stop the same thing occuring across other timezones.

According to The Telegraph, this is all set to change after Apple finally confirmed that the bug would be patched in the release of its iOS 4.2 firmware update due this month. The update, currently in the Gold Master stage, has already been seeded to developers meaning the fix has already been incorporated into the firmware.

Apple said in a statement:

“We’re aware of an issue related to daylight-saving time and repeating alarms and will deliver a fix with the iOS 4.2 software update this month.

We suggest customers set non-repeating alarms for now, and reset after November 7 to resolve the issue.”

With US iPhone owners expected to fall foul of the bug on November 7, Apple may decide to release the update before a new set of customers experience problems.

Update: Having just upgraded an iPhone 4 to iOS 4.2, we thought we would test to see if the new firmware fixed the bug. Luckily, it does.