A few points about rotation, hopefully to clarify some of the questions....

The default button mappings for the D-Pad have changed to focus on rotation instead of panning. If you are upgrading from v1.4.x, your old settings will remain as they were (pan-centric), because I don't like blasting away people's preferences. The new defaults (in case you want to change them to the new defaults) of the D-Pad are as follows:

Left: Rotate Counter-clockwise
Right: Rotate Clockwise
Up: Reset View (North points Up)
Down: Toggle Auto-Rotate

The center button is unchanged (default is "Toggle Auto-Center").

The old mappings (i.e. if you upgraded and didn't change them) map to "Pan North", "Pan South", etc. Which, if you're rotated, can be a little confusing. If you like to keep panning with your D-Pad, you might want to change them to "Pan Up", "Pan Down", etc.

Auto-Rotate only works with a GPS connection and when Auto-Center is enabled. (I didn't think it made much sense to auto-rotate if you're not centered on your location.)