Sadly, this seems to be the best way to do this:
public static Date convertLocalTimestamp(long millis)
{
TimeZone tz = TimeZone.getDefault();
Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance(tz);
long localMillis = millis;
int offset, time;
c.set(1970, Calendar.JANUARY, 1, 0, 0, 0);
// Add milliseconds
while (localMillis > Integer.MAX_VALUE)
{
c.add(Calendar.MILLISECOND, Integer.MAX_VALUE);
localMillis -= Integer.MAX_VALUE;
}
c.add(Calendar.MILLISECOND, (int)localMillis);
// Stupidly, the Calendar will give us the wrong result if we use getTime() directly.
// Instead, we calculate the offset and do the math ourselves.
time = c.get(Calendar.MILLISECOND);
time += c.get(Calendar.SECOND) * 1000;
time += c.get(Calendar.MINUTE) * 60 * 1000;
time += c.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY) * 60 * 60 * 1000;
offset = tz.getOffset(c.get(Calendar.ERA), c.get(Calendar.YEAR), c.get(Calendar.MONTH), c.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH), c.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK), time);
return new Date(millis - offset);
}
(I know that this is several months past post date, but it's a problem that is very useful to solve when working with text messages on Android. dave's answer is wrong.)