In hindsight it shouldn’t have come as any surprise: The compass app could hardly know where north is if I had all location permissions turned off. Truthfully I never really believed turning that feature off did anything – and I’m still not completely convinced that it does anything but disable some phone functions. Just because you know you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
But it turns out that turning “Location Services” on opens a menu of services you can permit or deny. I left virtually all of them off, which should have the same basic effect, if any, as turning the main switch off.
Anyway, the compass app is working now. And now it’ll probably be another several years before I use it again – normally when I know I’m going to need a compass I just bring my actual (excellent) compass.
As a hermit in a sun & star-blessed desert I assume you have traditional methods for finding direction and time by natural methods….
Sure I do. Since I live in a roughly 4-square-mile Gulch that’s basically a long valley that I know very well I navigate exclusively by landmark and get along fine. The movement of sun and moon and even wind are predictable guides but when you’re thinking of where to move a solar panel rack you really need a compass. 🙂
I just stand there at solar noon and point myself at the sun to find south. I don’t find phone compasses to be very accurate, and even with a proper compass you can forget to account for the magnetic correction.
I’m glad to see that there really wasn’t an issue with your iPhone. It’s always the simple things that trip us up. As for me, being the kind of guy who looks both ways when crossing a one way street, I always carry a small button compass* to go along with the compass in my cellphone. 😊
* https://countycomm.com/products/rugged-anodized-aluminium-compasses
Huh, I hadn’t realized they changed the hardware. In the original iPhones they had an actual compass, it didn’t depend on anything fancy like GPS.