Timestamps in UNIX are not like in Windows, there's no creation date saved on the file (that is, on the inode).

   st_atime
         This is the file's last access timestamp.

  st_mtime
         This is the file's last modification timestamp.

  st_ctime
         This is the file's last status change timestamp.

Source: stat(2) man page.

For a less technical explanation see here.

There is indeed no creation timestamp, but there is a modification timestamp, which is the important one—the one my gallery application relies on (as do most applications featuring a "sort by time" option) and the one Amaze didn't keep. (It can be set with the touch -mt command which is what I eventually did, or preserved when copying with cp -p which is what I think Amaze should do)

PS: with "most applications" I was thinking on desktop file browsers such as Nautilus, or command line applications like ls -t

@cousteaulecommandant there's no way to preserve them when you move to a mountable storage such as SD Card. If, however, you move those files within internal storage then they will be preserved.
Edit : my bad, there are ways to preserve, but implementing them is outside the scope of a file manager.

Here's the solution:

int targetfile = open(target_file_path, O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|(no_clobber ? O_EXCL : 0), 0600);
struct timespec times[] = { source_stat->st_atim, source_stat->st_mtim, };
futimens(targetfile, times);

Source: How difficult is it to preserve metadata when moving a file? by Richard Maw (extract).
This is not trivial, but can be implemented.
Related: #843.

Edit : my bad, there are ways to preserve, but implementing them is outside the scope of a file manager.

Why?
On a desktop it would be totally expected behavior.

Hi and first of all thanks for this great file manager!

Would like to come back to this issue from a few years ago, as I have to admit, am facing the same challenge. And additionally I don't see the topic "outside the scope of a file manager" ( @VishalNehra ) as many others eg the stock Samsung file manager as well as some others do preserve the "last changed" timestamp also upon a move to the SD card.

Would appreciate, if this could be looked into again - and potentially also changed (or at least be a switchable option) - as it at least for me is the "breaking point" why I would currently not use the Amaze file manager, sorry...

-- Edit / Addition: --

Just looking into another open source file manager by Fossify (https://github.com/FossifyOrg/File-Manager/) I found the following option in the settings for exactly this expected behaviour:

this seems to be a bug in File#setLastModified (see this, this & this). looking for workarounds...

this seems to be a bug in File#setLastModified (see this, this & this). looking for workarounds...

update: nvm, that works fine, t'was my mistake! btw, added a fallback option too now that we've stumbled upon this. :)