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@susie@blob.cat @piggo@piggo.space there are ways to, at the very least, make it not try to re-route you because it thinks you've done a u-turn (when driving i would get this A LOT in stop & go traffic in construction areas until i tweaked it)

but when walking and when this happens, if i open up my phone's stock compass & leveling tool it will have me cast the calibration spell and it pretty much clears up. when the calibration is off, the phone can't be sure which way is which when you aren't moving because there isn't enough moment-to-moment-generally-correct data to average in to something that makes sense. at higher speeds, (A)GPS/"Location Services" can make up for this enough to not notice (or to be enough to fake it).

environmental variables like temperature, barometric pressure, and your proximity to giant metal things are what it needs to calibrate against. thus the waving it around in a figure-8 (temperature changes the accelerometer's calibration), and the spinning in a circle (magnetic flux compensation in the magnetometer).

tl;dr: yes you are correct! and it can be mitigated by calibrating the joystick!