How accurate is your compass?

[1979w72]

Wondering how many of you have a compass that is accurate through its entire travel? Mine heads in the right direction for about 270 degrees (rotating the phone) and the other 90 it is off by about 30 degrees. I have checked out 4 or 5 others in stores since launch day and they behave exactly the same. I also see this behavior using street view.

 

[bthoward]

If I needed a compass to actually get somewhere (which I've done in the past w/ an actual map and compass) I'd not be taking my Droid with me. Its not very good at all...

 

[n9zez]

Mine seems to be spot on. I haven;t compared it with a true compass or anything but myself.

 

[TonyG]

I have my Droid and a real compass sitting next to each other on my desk--and they both show the same direction. However, there are two points to remember: first, the Droid's compass is a very sensitive magnetic sensor, thus it will show usually wrong direction inside the car or next to any large magnetic bodies or devices (monitors, computers, power supplies, appliances etc.) Second, you need to recalibrate it every so often by making slow figues-8 in the air for a few times in the open without any interfering magnetic bodies nearby, until the magnetic field strength values in the GPS Status screen, a free Market app, are almost the same, like 52/53 or so. The best way to gain confidence in your Droid is to buy for a few bucks a decent compass--and compare.

 

[JediJesus]

Mine doesn't work very well. It could be the apps im using. Compass and gps status.

 

[johninbigd]

I have my Droid and a real compass sitting next to each other on my desk--and they both show the same direction. However, there are two points to remember: first, the Droid's compass is a very sensitive magnetic sensor, thus it will show usually wrong direction inside the car or next to any large magnetic bodies or devices (monitors, computers, power supplies, appliances etc.) Second, you need to recalibrate it every so often by making slow figues-8 in the air for a few times in the open without any interfering magnetic bodies nearby, until the magnetic field strength values in the GPS Status screen, a free Market app, are almost the same, like 52/53 or so. The best way to gain confidence in your Droid is to buy for a few bucks a decent compass--and compare.

I've noticed that Compass is usually very inaccurate for me, so I tried the recalibration. It never helps. In fact, a couple of times it has made things worse. I tried waving it in figure 8 patterns with GPS status open and the values are usually more like 65/52. I don't know what those mean, but if they're supposed to be close, I couldn't get them there.