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Compass WAY off.... (Pics)

I just had to test mine after seeing this. Took it out back and it was working perfectly, pointing in the right direction as I walked around the backyard.
 
Mine doesn't seem to work around the instrument cluster of my car. I can have the car stationary and keep the phone facing the same direction sliding side to side and it goes 180 degrees. Outside the car seems perfect. ???
 
Mine is completely reversed... The North arrow points south.... quite accurately. I've tried the figure 8 move with no luck.... hrmm.
 
Simple and maybe stupid question :

Did you tap the Info-Button and both phones have the same settings ?

Geographical or magnetic North ?
 
hmmm how are you supposed to trust the compass if it reads wrong once and awhile? Real happy I am not lost somewhere with it because if I knew what direction I was supposed to be facing I wouldn't need a compass.
 
This compass problem has been bugging me as well. I tried calling iPhone support twice and neither person seems to know anything about it. I don't think my compass has pointed in the correct direction once since I received the phone; at places with the least interference that I could find, it is still off by about 20 degrees consistently. Granted, I live in Manhattan, New York City but this is ridiculous. I do not own a car but I've been hearing a lot about how the dashboard electronics interfere with it, which is also ridiculous to the point of being hilarious, as you would think a car is one of the most common places a compass would be appreciated? They can blame "interference" all they want but at the end of the day there is no reason why the iPhone compass has to be so awful while the compass in cars or GPS units for cars work perfectly.
 
Same problem here. I was driving west, but the compass indicated east. After waving my arm around like an idiot, compass had mercy and switched to pointing north, not that it wasn't that much less of a fail...
 
dagomike said:
Mine doesn't seem to work around the instrument cluster of my car. I can have the car stationary and keep the phone facing the same direction sliding side to side and it goes 180 degrees. Outside the car seems perfect. ???
Click to expand...

There's probably a fat-ass transformer in there creating a magnetic field.
 
Have you tried the same thing with a quality real compass?

Many times compass simply do not work indoors or in cars or near power lines. Of if placed on office furniture. You can't expect the iPhone compas to work better then a real compass. Even if you take your keys and place them near a compass it will effect the reading.

Do your experiment outdoors

Certainly you should never place two compasses near each other and expect both to read the same, Each compass has a magnet and each will effect the other's reading.


at places with the least interference that I could find, it is still off by about 20 degrees consistently.
Click to expand...

This is to be expected

What is the magnetic "declination" in your area? (It varies in different parts of the world.)
Here in So. Californis it is about 14 degrees. (EDIT: I just looked it up. It's 20 degrees at your location) "Declination" is the difference between True North (the direction to the North Pole) and "Magnetic North" which is in Graeenland some place. When ever you use a compass you must account for this. Any decent compass will have a way to adjust for declination but that adjustment varies by a wide (30 degree) amount based on location. Also it varies by a few fractions of a degree per year even at the same location.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_north
 
I'd really like to see some people testing the iPhone against real compasses. Saying that it doesn't point north is a bit silly - no compasses ever point north, as the earth's magnetic field is incredibly complex.

Saying it's broke with no reference point is a bit pointless. However, I'm not necessarily saying they aren't actually broke...
 
boffinboots said:
I'd really like to see some people testing the iPhone against real compasses. Saying that it doesn't point north is a bit silly - no compasses ever point north, as the earth's magnetic field is incredibly complex.

Saying it's broke with no reference point is a bit pointless. However, I'm not necessarily saying they aren't actually broke...
Click to expand...

The way I know mine is off is when I am looking down a street, my phone is off the the left of the street. I don't expect it to be 100% spot on, but it looks like it is significantly off
 
Andruw91 said:
Is there a way to recalibrate it? Is there a setting somewhere to do that?
Click to expand...

I haven't found it yet. Of course it seems to pop up every once and a while and ask you do to the "figure eight wave" (to which my wife says: what the f' are you doing?). But when that was done it was still off. I can't find a way to make it ask for the figure-8 wave.

Also, I did find out in another thread about clicking on the location icon in maps multiple times to get it to compass. WHERE the hell are the instructions to this thing!!!! The original phones were easy enough that it was pretty clear what to do. There are a lot of features in 3.0 that seem to have no obvious interface or interface hints. Kind of a poor job by Apple on documenting the new features. Do they expect all their users to hang out on forums hourly?
 
Isn't the declination effect the reason why the iPhone compass options screen let you choose between magnetic and true north? I've tried both settings and neither show the right direction. I'm not saying I expect the iPhone compass to surpass all others, but it should at least perform on par with other compasses in its category (i.e. the electronic compasses found in cars, dash-mount gps units, and portable gps units), which have been around for a long time. And, let's say there's somehow a legitimate excuse for why the compass is overly sensitive, at the end of the day it's as simple as the thing not doing what it was designed to do - if people can't tell if the compass is pointing in the right direction why bother having it at all? If it goes haywire every time you travel past magnetic fields generated by common things it basically makes most of its potential applications impractical, no?

ChrisA said:
Have you tried the same thing with a quality real compass?

Many times compass simply do not work indoors or in cars or near power lines. Of if placed on office furniture. You can't expect the iPhone compas to work better then a real compass. Even if you take your keys and place them near a compass it will effect the reading.

Do your experiment outdoors

Certainly you should never place two compasses near each other and expect both to read the same, Each compass has a magnet and each will effect the other's reading.




This is to be expected

What is the magnetic "declination" in your area? (It varies in different parts of the world.)
Here in So. Californis it is about 14 degrees. (EDIT: I just looked it up. It's 20 degrees at your location) "Declination" is the difference between True North (the direction to the North Pole) and "Magnetic North" which is in Graeenland some place. When ever you use a compass you must account for this. Any decent compass will have a way to adjust for declination but that adjustment varies by a wide (30 degree) amount based on location. Also it varies by a few fractions of a degree per year even at the same location.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_north
Click to expand...
 
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