magnetometer troubles

[Belsatzar]

i've been a (mostly) happy user of the milestone, as it is called over here, but in the past few days i noticed a problem.
the compass in the phone is not only off, but virtually broken. it detects a constant reading "to the upper left", which simply overrides the earth's magnetic field. so, no matter how i turn the phone, north is always between one and two o'clock. by using the amazin tricorder app, i was able to find out that the magnitude of the reading differs significantly depending on the orientation of the phone, reaching almost "100" in the max, and about "65" when the phone is 180

 

[teschoen]

did you spin the phone on all 3 axis?

 

[Belsatzar]

you mean, to reset the magnetometer? or to figure out the exact position of the "subjective north"?

 

[Belsatzar]

can noone help me? any suggestions?

 

[cimisman]

Did you move your phone in a figure 8 pattern to set it?

 

[Belsatzar]

yes, i drew eights in all axis. but nothing changed at all.

 

[Sempai]

I don't know if this will help you but I was experiencing the exact same behavior on my Motorola Droid ... I was extremely frustrated when neither spinning nor figure 8's solved the problem. I was disappointed that the answer wasn't here and thought I might have been headed for a hardware swap when I started to suspect my compass app (marine compass). I uninstalled it . . . google sky started responding properly again . . . and the replacement compass app ( by snaptic) is now working perfectly. Good luck.