I have upgraded my HTC Desire to Android 2.2. Unfortunately I have realized that after that update, an embedded compass started acting up. I mean it's not showing the North anymore. It seems to me that it's not an issue with some particular application as I have tried with several ones available on the Market and it needs to be some bug with new OS. Anyway here is what I have figured out and what I have already done in order to get this sorted out. At this point of time, it even looks like I have just some kinda workaround:
Once I pick out 'Calibrate' menu item in Compass v1.1 (developed by Snaptic, Inc.) and then according to the instruction, start off waving my phone in a figure 8 pattern to reset the magnetometer on my device, it's not gonna fix the issue but when I start rolling my phone in a hand (side to side then top to bottom) and then it seems to me that the issue is sorted out as finally compass points out the North, but after I close the application and open it again (or open any other compass based app) the magnetometer is broken again So all what I can do is to reset the magnetometer as per above-mentioned instruction again. It just looks like the device is not able to save some compass calibration setting anymore.
Anyway I was just wondering if some of you already faced this same issue and know how to fix it permanently. I would appreciate it, if you could share any thoughts with me. Thanks in advance.
Hey folks, I don't believe that nobody experiences that issue too. Maybe you just haven't noticed that yet? Anyway could you please just check if your compass works as intended after the upgrade to Android 2.2? Personally, I really believe it's a bug with Froyo.
I think mine is also acting weird.
Wenn starting Google Maps and using streetview in compass mode it only looks up and down and I cannot look from left to right.
When i roll the phone a few times in my hand it starts working.
But after closing Google Maps and starting it again I have to do the rolling again
I was wondering that compass problem too. With ver.2.1 everything worked like a dream as I use compass mostly geocaching. After updating in every app I've tried the compass stucks pointing to approx. to the lower left corner of the screen. Sometimes calibration helps but it stuck again after a while even the app is running all the time.
"Compass" app kinda could wake up after waiting a while but usually it doesn't. In any other software won't work at all as I've tried, 5secs after calibration but nothing more.
JLillia said:
With ver.2.1 everything worked like a dream as I use compass mostly geocaching..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
@JLillia: Also in my case the compass worked as intended on android 2.1.
Anyway thanks for your answers guys! I really appreciate it! So it looks like at least 3 folks here are experiencing some issues with digital compass after the upgrade to the Froyo on HTC Desire
Wonder if there is anyone here who could disagree with us and say that the upgrade didn't cause any compass degradation on his/her device at all...
I can't say if it worked properly with 2.1, didn't use the compass a lot before.
With 2.1 I needed to calibrate it a few times, but probably not as much as I need to do now. I'm using the "compass" app and it directly tells me it detected an abnormal magnetic field. After calibrating it again, it points north. Haven't checked the correct north with a real compass, so it may have a slight difference.
I put my phone down at the table at 0 degrees N. I turn off my screen, and turn it back on. It is now pointing 90 degrees E. But the interesting thing is.. the east is actually located west, compared with the previous north :?
When I rotate my phone it displays only E or SE, always between 90 degrees E and 130 degrees SE. I can't even find north.
I can rotate my phone 180 degrees (Pointing south), it displays 130 degrees. When I calibrate the phone and I rotate my phone 180 degrees (Still south) it displays 160 degrees S. Which is kinda strange. And when I try to find the 180 degrees point, and rotate my phone again, it displays 35 degrees NE.
After another calibration the values seems to be okay...
My conclusion? Don't trust the compass at all unless you have a real compass to compare.
That person with the exact opposite experience is me
I complained on 2.1 here with many others about the compass going haywire every time you took it off-screen and its lack of stability and consistency. HTC 2.2 totally fixed this issue for me. I've calibrated it once about a week back and it's still accurate every time I'm opening it and in Google Earth.
Beware, the compass draws a lot of power in use so it'll drain the battery very fast. About as fast as playing a 8Mbps 720p VC-1 vid.
-----------------------------------
- Sent via my HTC Desire -
My problem is kinda dame that with Nakebod.
As I said compass stucks pointing to the lower left corner, it infact tells I'm holding the phone towards 120-130 decrees east, where ever I turn the phone to. Calibration helps for a while as after that the compass points approxamtely to north which is enough direction to me, but after a while or at least after swithing apps or taking compass background and back on, it stucks again to the 130 decrees.
Of course I am not using this kind of device as "for real" but I'd like to have it at least somewhat accurate. As geocacher I use compass as a tool with my hobby and I was quite happy with Desire because of the quite accurate GPS but after the update the compass is practically useless.
Just a quick update, I made a quick phone call to HTC support this morning and raised that issue. The support analyst recommended the factory data reset to see if it helps. I guess it's just a standard answer so at this point of time I'm not gonna proceed with that and erase all data on my phone. (Btw, I wonder if it's possible to backup all current data from my unrooted, unbranded Desire?)
Furthermore he promised to get back to me in next few days with some official resolution of that issue so I will keep you updated.
Try calibrating your magnetometer by waving your phone in 8-shaped moves.
I emailed HTC customer care also about the issue and the answer was to factory reset the phone. Of course that was the first thing I had already done at the minute I noticed the problem in first place so I wasn't quite fond of the idea. In fact I have reseted phone three times after the update and allways the result was the same; compass stucks.
Well, I thought that maybe I have some weird app that messes up the compass so I tried one more time...
At first after the reset I downloaded only EStrong file manager, compass and c:eo. Compass worked most of the time! I kept resuming backups and compass did stuck occasionally but not very often (+ abnormal magnetic field). I am not sure what I did leave out of the phone but now the comapss works quite fine. It is a lot more sensitive for magnetic fields than in 2.1 but usually calibration works to it.
So, the conclusion is, that even for some reason first times the reset didn't work, it did help after all. Just backup your data and give it a try. Doesn't cost more than some time. The compass DOES stuck still but is most of the time usable.
At least I left out MoreLocale2, Metal detector and some games. And I DIDN'T calibrate G-sensors after reset.
So, there is still some issues with update and compass but it COULD also be somewhat application related...
G-Sensor calibration might be the answer! Following the first factory reset yesterday which cleared the compass problem initially I reinstalled all apps and calibrated G-sensor to find the problem came back. Then I factory-reset once more last night and reinstalled all apps but didn't do the re-calibration, left the phone on for the night - no problem in the morning. Feel tempted to re-calibrate to proof the point now.
Please inform here how did it do if you re-calibrate. I have an ongoing geocaching challenge, so I won't try that until I'm sure that I don't need the compass for couple of days. After that I'm going to test if calibration is the problem as soon as possible.
I have the same problem. Have tried everything but hard reset. Still, compass worked a lot better on 2.1 :-(
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
nitemarc said:
@JLillia: Also in my case the compass worked as intended on android 2.1.
Anyway thanks for your answers guys! I really appreciate it! So it looks like at least 3 folks here are experiencing some issues with digital compass after the upgrade to the Froyo on HTC Desire
Wonder if there is anyone here who could disagree with us and say that the upgrade didn't cause any compass degradation on his/her device at all...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My compass works fine on HTC Desire on Android 2.2.
Try 3d compass, and use its calibration option. Always works for me.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
nitemarc said:
Just a quick update, I made a quick phone call to HTC support this morning and raised that issue. The support analyst recommended the factory data reset to see if it helps. I guess it's just a standard answer so at this point of time I'm not gonna proceed with that and erase all data on my phone. (Btw, I wonder if it's possible to backup all current data from my unrooted, unbranded Desire?)
Furthermore he promised to get back to me in next few days with some official resolution of that issue so I will keep you updated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wonder how does HTC support team's SLA look like in terms of resolving client's tickets as my one hasn't been resolved yet... Anyway it seems to me that HTC is not going to confirm that OTA update to Froyo could caused that compass issue.
That's why I decided on factory data reset and it looks like that helped with getting this issue sorted out. After the hard reset, my first step was an initial compass calibration and that's really all what I did. The digital compass is not maybe so precise and accurate as it used to be on Android 2.1 but finally roughly (I would say with 15° margin) points out the north so there is a progress
Just to add my 2c, I can confirm that the compass has become useless since I upgraded to 2.2 on my device. Doing the figure 8 in Compass app has short lived benefits.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
Neither does my compass react in any application (tried Compass, Places directory, Google Navigation) after update to Froyo.
Calibrating with the 8 movement or G-sensor calibration does not help at all.
However, it always starts working normally when I tilt the phone to the side (so that I look on the slim side of the phone) and then start a short forward and backward rotation with the rotational axis going thru the display.
I need to repeat this every time I unlock the phone and the compass keeps on working until i lock the phone again or until I switch the application.
Weired.
I have the same problem, and it is a bit annoying. The compass works correctly if I wave the phone like in the video posted, but I have to do this every time I start an app that uses the magnetometer. My phone was not like this on 2.1.
Hey guys,
A few hours ago, I turned on my stock camera app, only to be greeted with a bunch of vertical pink/purple lines - with no image of what I was aiming my camera at present on my screen. How did this happen now? It worked fine this afternoon, and this was the first time something like this ever happened to me.
No matter, I did some searching around, and found some posts regarding the "camera sensor" and how a person fixed it by "switching it out". It was pretty ambiguous and I have no idea what he meant. At this point, I'm hoping for the worst, thinking its a hardware defect.
Anyway, the next few threads I see talk about radio and setting the phone to airplane mode before use.
I don't think I have a problem with the radio, it has always been fine so far (32U_5.11.05.27), so I tried the airplane mode fix, and somehow, all camera functionality has been restored (no more purple/pink lines).
So my question is, how did this happen? Will it happen again? Can I totally rule out that its not a hardware defect?
I had the same issue some time ago with my old rom (can't remember which one it was exactly) ,just rebooted the phone and prob was gonnne.Been 1 month with no issues so far...
As to the reason,it could be a great deal of them,but my money is on the rom (if it's not a stock one.)
That's good to hear, but I actually did try rebooting (and also clearing out camera data/cache, for whatever reason) to no avail.
Toggling airplane mode was what did it for me, but still, I'm curious on how this happens / might happen again in the future
Hi guys,
just came back from me business trip and realized that.. I have posted something totally useless.
So I came back, with the same request, but properly explained.
I have and issue with my Desire HD. There is a strange problem with the magnetometer. I took me a while to find out that is connected to it, because.. sometimes by screen just remains blocked. There is no response from it to touch. After some seconds (between 1 and 20), it works. But, the compass is not working (if I check with some sensor application it says that magnetometer is not present.
Sometimes, the best workaround is to disable screen rotation (that is also somehow strange to me, as I don't really see the connection).
After a factory reset (install new ROM, etc), everything is OK until I use the GPS the first time.
So, the questions now:
1. As the sensor works (sometimes for days), I expect to be a 'software' problem. How do I manually reset the magnetometer? I have read that for Galaxy (for example), you can do that by getting in some hidden factory menu...
2. Is it posible to disable the sensor totally? I would not like to do that, as I would like to have the screen rotation, but it can be handy to be able to enable/disable it.
Thanks for all your answer
Hi guys,
just came back from me business trip and realized that.. I have posted something totally useless.
So I came back, with the same request, but properly explained.
All the threads I read are about Galaxy or other phones....
I have and issue with my Desire HD. There is a strange problem with the magnetometer. I took me a while to find out that is connected to it, because.. sometimes by screen just remains blocked. There is no response from it to touch. After some seconds (between 1 and 20), it works. But, the compass is not working (if I check with some sensor application it says that magnetometer is not present.
Sometimes, the best workaround is to disable screen rotation (that is also somehow strange to me, as I don't really see the connection).
After a factory reset (install new ROM, etc), everything is OK until I use the GPS the first time.
So, the questions now:
1. As the sensor works (sometimes for days), I expect to be a 'software' problem. How do I manually reset the magnetometer? I have read that for Galaxy (for example), you can do that by getting in some hidden factory menu...
2. Is it posible to disable the sensor totally? I would not like to do that, as I would like to have the screen rotation, but it can be handy to be able to enable/disable it.
P.S. MAybe an admin can delete this thread (I have created the new one just because the old one.. is way back...hope this does not come against any rule)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1368106
Thanks for all your answer
I cannot belive nobody has an idea. At least an idea, if not a solution.
My screen will not rotate. I have reset my phone and have made sure that the box is checked for auto rotation. Also when I try to calibrate the sensors it will not allow me. I have searched but haven't seen anything yet unless I missed something. Please help.
rebal1oo said:
My screen will not rotate. I have reset my phone and have made sure that the box is checked for auto rotation. Also when I try to calibrate the sensors it will not allow me. I have searched but haven't seen anything yet unless I missed something. Please help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did a hard reset and it is fixed now. I was resetting my phone from the menu before. I also set up as a new phone this time and then reset from a backup.
rebal1oo said:
I did a hard reset and it is fixed now. I was resetting my phone from the menu before. I also set up as a new phone this time and then reset from a backup.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This happens a lot? Or just once? Does it still rotate?
It only happened once. The night before I wached YouTube and it worked fine. The next dayit quit working. After a hard reset it works fine now.
I also have some issued related with screen rotation...
Sometimes, not in all apps, when I rotate the phone from portrait to landscape, I get for a while only half of the display. Sometimes take almost a minute to go to the normal resolution (or complete display).
The image get kind of shrinked only on the left side of the display, if I turn back to portrait I have (of course) only the superior half.
Anyone with the same issue? Any solution?
Thank you