Ok, I'm starting to think this is a low-level thing. I ran mtpaint in Debian, and I'm getting identical, really low values for pressure. The same spots are "dead" too. Interestingly, I'm also getting negative values for X and Y coordinates! This suggests that Hildonized programs have some sort of workaround for the weird numbers the touchscreen returns.

Both Gimp and MTPaint have a tablet device configure page that allows you to select the X, Y and Z coordinates, but that's it. No way to calibrate the tablet or adjust the numbers.

There must be some way to configure this. I'm trying to find the configuration files, anyone have any ideas? Is there an Xomap config file like xorg.conf? Does anyone know of a standard Linux tablet calibration program?