Compass issue

Hello,
Recently I bought SGS and I'm pretty happy with this device. The only thing that concerns me is compass. After I installed Compass app from market I tested build in sensor. For few minutes north direction was everywhere. After that it showed proper N direction, still movement of needle was bit jerky, nothing major but it wasn't 100% smooth. Later on app displayed info about abnormal magnetic field and after that compass was really smooth. Also I noticed when I use compass often, let's say every 2-3 hours it keeps calibration but when I tested in the morning I had to calibrate it from beginning. Could you share with me your experiences with compass? It is quite important to me because I consider to return this device.
Thanks in advance.

I know this procedure sounds hokey, but it really works to get the compass working properly.

I was ready to return my phone as defective until I tried this.  I tried the figure-8 stuff about a dozen times - didn't work.

But this worked the first time:

Find a level table.  On the phone go to Settings, Display, Horizontal Calibration.  Put the phone face down on the table with the lower part of the phone hanging over the edge.  Look under the phone and press the "calibrate" button keeping the phone face-down.  Don't move the phone.  It takes about 3 seconds to calibrate.

It worked for me the first time, but you may have to try it a couple of times.

It really works, no joke.  My compass was jumping around all 360 degrees before doing this.  Google Skymap was basically useless with the messed up compass.  Now it is almost rock-solid pointing to north and Skymap works perfectly.

Flash MIUI MintBerry with Glitch kernel and compass will be working well.


Sent from ICSSGS RC4, stock kernel

All good answers and work most of  the time, but not always. If all the above has failed then you need to reset and calibrated the magnetic sensor at the hardware level.

To recalibrate the Galaxy S sensors at the hardware level-

Bring up the Phone Keypad (as if you were dialing a phone number) and type *#0*#
This takes you to the phones test screen. Click the box marked Sensors. You can now reset and calibrate the magnetic sensor. At the bottom the screen will be a black disc which represents a compass. The red line should point North. There should also be a number in the disc. If the numbers are 0, 1 or 2, the phone needs calibration. 3 means calibrated. All you do is rotate/roll the phone several times through each axis, until the number reaches 3. The phone then vibrate and says Calibrated. Now if you place the phone down, away from box magnetic fields, the red line should point North. Press the Home Key to exit. Done.