Electronic watch and electronic watch control method

A method of controlling an electronic watch including a hand, a stepping motor including a coil, the stepping motor being configured to drive the hand, a drive circuit configured to drive the stepping motor, a current detection circuit configured to detect a current value flowing through the drive circuit, and a random access memory configured to store polarity information of a drive pulse output to the drive circuit, the method for causing a controller to execute a process, the method comprising executing on the controller the steps of:

• deleting the polarity information stored in the random access memory when the electronic watch is initialized;
• storing initialized polarity information into the random access memory after the polarity information stored in the random access memory has been deleted;
• outputting a polarity detection pulse to the drive circuit based on the initialized polarity information stored in the random access memory, the polarity detection pulse not causing the stepping motor to rotate by one step;
• performing a polarity determination processing of determining whether a polarity of the stepping motor and the initialized polarity information match based on the current value detected by the current detection circuit in response to the output of the polarity detection pulse;
• and
• changing the initialized polarity information when the polarity of the stepping motor and the initialized polarity information do not match.