Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC")) is not returning UTC time

Question

I am really confused with the result I am getting with Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC")) method call, it's returning IST time.

Here is the code I used

Calendar cal_Two = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
System.out.println(cal_Two.getTime());

and the response I got is:

Sat Jan 25 15:44:18 IST 2014

So I tried changing the default TimeZone to UTC and then I checked, then it is working fine

Calendar cal_Two = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
System.out.println(cal_Two.getTime());

TimeZone tz  = TimeZone.getDefault() ;
TimeZone.setDefault(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
Calendar cal_Three = Calendar.getInstance();
System.out.println(cal_Three.getTime());
TimeZone.setDefault(tz);

Result:

Sat Jan 25 16:09:11 IST 2014
Sat Jan 25 10:39:11 UTC 2014

Am I missing something here?

Answer 1

The System.out.println(cal_Two.getTime()) invocation returns a Date from getTime(). It is the Date which is getting converted to a string for println, and that conversion will use the default IST timezone in your case.

You'll need to explicitly use DateFormat.setTimeZone() to print the Date in the desired timezone.

EDIT: Courtesy of @Laurynas, consider this:

TimeZone timeZone = TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC");
Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance(timeZone);
SimpleDateFormat simpleDateFormat = 
       new SimpleDateFormat("EE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy", Locale.US);
simpleDateFormat.setTimeZone(timeZone);

System.out.println("Time zone: " + timeZone.getID());
System.out.println("default time zone: " + TimeZone.getDefault().getID());
System.out.println();

System.out.println("UTC:     " + simpleDateFormat.format(calendar.getTime()));
System.out.println("Default: " + calendar.getTime());