Partial update of RecyclerView.ViewHolder

You can notify your RecyclerView.Adapter‘s observers to issue a partial update of your RecyclerView.ViewHolders by passing a payload Object.

notifyItemRangeChanged(positionStart, itemCount, payload);

Where payload could be or contain a flag that represents relative or absolute time. To bind the payload to your view holders, override the following onBindViewHolder(viewHolder, position, payloads) method in your adapter, and check the payloads parameter for data.

@Override
public void onBindViewHolder(MyViewHolder viewHolder, int position, List<Object> payloads) {
    if (payloads.isEmpty()) {
        // Perform a full update
        onBindViewHolder(viewHolder, position);
    } else {
        // Perform a partial update
        for (Object payload : payloads) {
            if (payload instanceof TimeFormatPayload) {
                viewHolder.bindTimePayload((TimeFormatPayload) payload);
            }
        }
    }
}

Within your MyViewHolder.bindTimePayload(payload) method, update your time TextViews to the time format specified in the payload.