Compass not working well!

[adee147]

Hi everyone!

Is anyone else facing this problem? My Xperia U's compass is not pointing to the correct north. The direction is very inconsistent and when I rotate my phone, the compass seems to rotate in the same direction under the effect of momentum.

Is it a hardware problem or software problem? And how to fix it?

[anandtapas]

some compass programmes require a gps fix atleast once. That means the programme needs to know your latitude and longitude. So Keep your gps on and move outdoors. Also make sure the services can connect to internet in background. This shoudl make the compass work.

[adee147]

I had Xperia X10 mini pro before and I had the same apps working fine with that phone. Ok I'll give it a try. Thanks for the help

[anandtapas]

position update may happen through google service. gps is not mandetory. but i told both to be sure.

let me know if this works ?

[adee147]

I gave it a try and

Outdoors, GPS on and connected, WIFI connected, Internet working but still the same behavior. The apps give wrong direction from the start, and when I steer the phone, the compass starts revolving too.

By the way the magnetic field is being detected fine. 40uT on average and upto 100+uT when placed on an iron surface. Don't know if other phones have the same values or not

[anandtapas]

Hi ! I dont know beyond this ! But now pls tell me how you measured 40uT and 100 uT ? I am interested to know. Also tell which app you used for 'compass' ?

How does XpU measure magnetic field ? It has only a gyro and accelerometer no ?

[adee147]

Hi!

Well there are many compass apps in the market. I use two of them, smart compass and find Qibla. The second one is for muslims though.

The compass is actually a magnetic sensor so the apps like 'smart metal detector' and 'smart compass' use that sensor to tell the magnetic strength in uT.

If you have Xperia U, then plz install these apps and let me know if they work fine

[anandtapas]

I will do that and give you feedback in a day.

[anandtapas]

I tried smart compass. It is off by appx 30 degrees. Field strenght ok as 38 uT. There is option to manually correct azimuth. and it says pro version can show true north if you have gps.

[KFB]

My XPERIA P is doing the same thing. Did you find a solution?