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> Come to think of it, I don't think I even own a compass. If you have an iPhone or (nearly any) Android phone, you have a compass.
by scoot 10y ago
> Come to think of it, I don't think I even own a compass.
If you have an iPhone or (nearly any) Android phone, you have a compass.
- maxerickson 10y agoA noisy battery driven compass though. If you are planning for the end of GPS, it doesn't seem like a great idea to lean on your cell phone.
- derefr 10y agoEasier, I think, to just make oneself slightly more autonomous with a solar-panel USB charger, than to acquire the sheer number of items that the smartphone phone has replaced. Just the number of physical maps you'd have to carry in place of one offline navigation app would make one regret the project.
- adrianpike 10y agoNot to sound too crazy prepper, but getting a compass and a couple waterproof paper maps of the region around me wasn't a huge lift.
- Spoom 10y agoI tried to use my Android phone as a compass for aiming my roof antenna... it was not very accurate.
- knodi123 10y agoIt's too sensitive. the ones attached to a physical pointer have inertia, and therefore resist oscillating or brief interference. Whereas the ones in your phone can actually give you an instantaneous reading, which is way more vulnerable to the odd magnetic fluctuation in the air. If your android compass took a hundred readings a second and gave you a rolling average of the last two seconds, that would probably be better... (note, just a theory, but one that seems consistent with my observations)
- jessaustin 10y agoThe earth's isn't the only magnetic field to which the phone is exposed, but unless one installs an antenna in a problematic location it should certainly be the dominant field. I have a hard time believing that the behavior described is "too good". It seems more likely that the phone is interfering with itself, and the circuitry required to avoid that simply isn't justified from a BOM perspective.
- Piskvorrr 10y agoAlso, any metallic object in the vicinity. Took me a while to realize why the compass goes haywire whenever I hold the phone with my left hand: a ferromagnetic-metal ring right beneath the device.
- caf 10y agoIf that was the problem then it would be easy enough to implement a damping filter in software.