Compass

[Guest jorenko]

Hi all, I bought a Vibrant last week and have been dismayed to find out that the compass seems to be functioning very badly for myself and many others, as noted in this t-mobile thread:

http://forums.t-mobile.com/t5/Samsung-Vibr...highlight/false

Has anyone here had this problem (or not) with the Vibrant? What about the Captivate, or the Korean or European versions of the Galaxy S? If so, has the MoDaCo custom ROM fixed it?

Thanks in advance for any info! I really want to get an idea of if I can expect this thing to ever work before my 14 day return period is over. :(

[Guest Igniztion]

The compass is abysmal on my Galaxy S I9000 (european version) as well. Noticed it when using Google Sky Map, as the map took ages to follow my movement.

Hopefully this will be fixed in a firmware update, or I might return the phone as it doesn't work as intended.

Edited July 27, 2010 by Igniztion

[Guest bushrat]

The compass is a little slow, maybe 1 sec behind my actual movement(UK i9000). Is that the problem, others seem to be reporting a much larger delay?

EDIT: After watching this vid

mine is definately not as slow as this! Edited July 27, 2010 by bushrat

[Guest chimerical26]

I recently had a HTC Desire and the compass on that was depressing too. I returned it to the store, not because of the compass issue but the battery was so bad that I couldn't use it as an everyday phone. I'm much happier with the Galaxy S although I haven't had a chance to test the compass yet but it sounds like it'll be much the same as the Desire going by your description... The battery is much better (Still not ideal but decent and I get a full day out of it.) I wish Samsung would've put a bigger battery in it. Maybe the 1800mAh battery that they are currently putting in their Beam projector phone. All these phone companies seem to think that smaller is better unfortunately and sacrifice things like Batteries and Flashes for the camera.

PS. If anyone is reading this an wondering if they should buy a Galaxy S or not well I would say it is the best option at the moment. There is no better phone unless you hold off for something to be released later in the year maybe a Window Phone 7 Series or even the Samsung Galaxy S2 maybe? But right now the Samsung Galaxy S seems to be the best.

[Guest Andrew Luecke]

It might be because of a smoothing algorithm to prevent the compass for jerking around too much. They possibly only allow the compass to turn a certain rate per second (which for most people makes sense, because applications such as Layar would jerk around excessively if they didn't, especially since the effect of magnetic interference might be immediate.

The actual MS-3C sensor itself apparently updates within 10ms, according to specs (not sure if that's max time for compass to resolve direction), so it's most likely a software issue. It could also be that the application is rendering slowly (which Froyo may help with). Applications may also smooth the compass a second time (increasing lag). If you run SensorTest though, it reacts quite quickly, but once again, some smoothing is possibly happening even then. It is also possible that Samsung might have set android to only poll the sensor once every 500ms or so, and they simply need to set it to a smaller amount.

There are plenty of reasons why the compass may not be snap bang immediately though, and the evidence seems to suggest software.

Honestly though, returning the phone because of the compass lag? I think that's kind of silly personally. Do you REALLY need Google Sky to be completely realtime? Tell me 1 good reason why you need a compass which is realtime? I think some people take technology for granted. The Samsung Galaxy S is a pretty damned amazing phone and Samsung just needs to do some tweaking to fix the drivers. No the software isn't perfect yet, but the phone has only been out for a short time. None of us want Samsung to focus on eclair, we all want Froyo asap, and we know they are working on Froyo.

But honestly, I don't find the compass is THAT bad. It may lag currently (most likely die to software as mentioned), but I'm betting it will get better. There is very little evidence that the issues encountered currently is hardware related.

[Guest WinhWah]

Just received the Vibrant via mail, yesterday. I've tested the compass side by side with the Nexus One, the Vibrant does really have some serious lag issues w/ the compass but oh well it doesn't really bother me. It's still an amazing phone, the screen is outstanding. Viva Android phones!

[Guest med07]

Did u calibrate compass ??

[Guest DistortedLoop]

Did u calibrate compass ??

Tell us how....

Thanks.

[Guest DanWilson]

Tell us how....

Thanks.

I don't know where, but it's doing a figure of eight a couple of times, but this just sounds like a software thing (limitations or something)

My Pulse compass seems very fast and responsive (unless I'm running out of RAM, but don't start me on that!)