I concur with everything @knc1 just said, the date/time most likely got thrashed with the crash and/or the hard-reboot, which is confusing the cover mode.
Usually, the easiest way to get a sane date/time is to to an Amazon sync over WiFi, but since that may not be an option here, yeeep, ;st it is

.
Random dumb idea @knc1: Does adding an off-line button that sets a sane-ish date (say, somewhere in January 2016) to your KUAL ntp set of buttons sound like a good idea?