Other mistake: Quinn is watching the video of the basketball returning from the vortex. The video shows him catching the basketball, then we see a shot of Quinn pressing the fast-forward button until he shows the basketball to the camera and says "and the crowd goes crazy!" The problem is that even though he pressed only the fast-forward button, the video fast-forwards from a point before the basketball came out of the vortex, which is impossible since Quinn never rewound the tape.
Other mistake: Quinn's alarm clock turns on, then about 8 seconds later we see the time change from 7:59 to 8:00. All clock radios turn on when the time changes, or possibly fade in slowly a few minutes before the alarm time, not a few seconds before.
Answer: It didn't malfunction. If I remember correctly, Quinn forgot to enter the coordinates to go home into the device.
lartaker1975
The device (timer) didn't open up a vortex to their home world because they opened the vortex up too early, before the timer hit zero. They were on a frozen planet and didn't think they could survive 5 hours and Quinn didn't realise that's what his double was warning him about. The vortex expanded to engulf Rembrandt because Quinn added too much power into the vortex to allow 3 people to slide.
Bishop73