Dell's ongoing Venue Pro problems: No compass driver in Mango?

By Daniel Rubino
last updated

Anyone who's used the Dell Venue Pro know its a love-hate relationship. And  just as things were looking up for the device with Mango and some new firmware, a new issue has cropped up, one that has been bothering us too.

The compass doesn't work. For any app. No Stars 3D, no compass, no augmented-reality, nothing.

The compass drive and API are up to the OEM to provide which is why when you update to Mango you get two updates: the OS and the firmware. And while Dell did deliver the firmware (jumping from 212 to 219) they evidently botched it with the compass driver, as is becoming obvious for many users.

Now at XDA, some sleuthing has in fact shown this to be the case. Mitchell S., has taken a look at the log during the Mango setup and found this:

**** Starting IMGFS Update @ 16:46:58 ****Deleting file compassDrv.dll.  <-- &$^4?!CustomSettings.cab.pkg->5E542BF4-046F-41AA-8BB7-FFB031E0F024.rgu @ 16:46:59Setting invalid OS stateQC_8x50_OS_SHIP.cab.pkg->D3F0E60E-DE7C-11DF-930A-3D26E0D72085.rgu @ 16:46:59CustomIcon.cab.pkg->05E12A31-F993-40A4-8A58-136879E5CCEC.rgu @ 16:46:59

Even if that wasn't the reason, it still doesn't explain why our compass is locked at 100 degrees. What say you, Dell? Are we going to have to wait another six-months for this to be fixed?

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.

7 Comments
  • This bugged me a whole lot. I was looking forward to using compass apps on my DVP but whenever you use one, the "needle" keeps twitching due north. For that matter, you can't use flashlight apps either. It's a damn shame. I changed out my memory card to deal with the pre-firmware marketplace and wi-fi freezing back in March, I forced the pre No-Do and No-Do updates with the ethernet cable trick and I went the developer preview to official Mango route with this phone just to try to love this phone the best I could. I think I'm done now. I'm very curious to see what WP('s) T-Mobile is going to come to market with. I would have loved to have the Titan but I see that's not going to happen.
  • wow dell sucks. compass works fine on my arrive, only good device dell had was the Axim Series but of course those were made by HTC
  • Surprising that Microsoft doesn't have quality tests for this before approving the drivers.
  • I think this might actually be a general problem to Mango. I have an HD2 (I know it is not a supported device)but before I updated it to Mango from NoDO I was able to use Compass apps.
  • D'oh! Augmented reality was one of the things my girlfriend was interested in when she got the Venue Pro. I'd thought that they'd finally fixed everything, but I guess they weren't up to the task.
  • I dunno about you but I still don't have the compass in Bing Maps (Omnia 7, Mango). It's set to automatically rotate the map based on my position but it stays north...
  • my venue pro works fine. What are they all smoking?