Hum, I'm also wondering if the compass in my Galaxy is broken. Help me figure this out, please!
The
Compass application is frequently way out of alignment (>90°), but always by a new degree. Oddly, the
GPS Status 2 application is only slightly out of alignment, but also to various degrees. The Metal Detector application works fine. My phone has not been dropped (other than perhaps during initial shipping) and has not been near magnets except for the trains on my daily commute.
Furthermore,
Spare Parts has a setting to "Show Compass in Maps", but even though I can set that check mark, it only lasts until I open Google Maps -- at which point (1) no compass can be seen, nor is the map rotated, and (2) when I afterwards revisit Spare Parts, the setting has been turned off again. I don't believe Spare Parts is G1-specific (at least I haven't seen that stated anywhere), so this is another indicator that my device is doing things that others probably aren't.
Also, and perhaps completely unrelated, the
Barcode Scanner works
a lot slower than
depicted in this video (starting at 0m42s) -- I usually have to struggle against extreme overexposure for a good 20 seconds before I get a capture.
I had hoped this was all related to the firmware issues being discussed at the time the Galaxy was launched, but now I'm on the H8 firmware, and things haven't improved a bit.
I am of course using the latest releases of these apps.
Do these things work for you? Is my Galaxy defective?