I cannot speak to people on my phone without using the microphone inbuilt in my phone. What is wrong with it and how do I fix it?

—Arpan Sharma

Hi Arpan,

This problem can usually arise when your earpiece microphone has died or when your phone’s software thinks there is an alternative to the earpiece to which the phone is routing the sound to. If you think your earpiece has died, there is no other option than to get it replaced. You could try cleaning the earpiece with a toothbrush to see if that works. On the software aspect of it, if you’re running a Samsung phone, you could try disabling the Noise Reduction feature in the Press Call options within Samsung Applications inside your Settings menu. If you’re not on a Samsung phone or the fix does not work, it could be because the phone’s software thinks that a headphone is present. This could happen because of debris inside the 3.5mm headphone port on your phone. There are sensors that tell the software side of the phone when a headphone has been plugged in and sometimes, because of some debris, the sensor can remain active even when headphones have not been plugged in. To fix this, try rolling paper into thin rolls and gently pry off any dirt that might have entered the port. If nothing works, you might be dealing with a dead earpiece and you will need to get it replaced for it to work again.

Everything on my phone looks big and ugly, is there any way to make them seem sharper and cleaner?

—Rabi Jasrotia

Hi Rabi,

UI scaling on any device, be it phone or computers, depends on how big of a resolution your graphics processor can churn out, and also if your screen can support all those extra pixels rendered by your graphics processor. This is more evident in computers, if your decrease your laptop’s resolution to a lower setting, all of the UI objects of Windows turn bigger and start to look pixelated and the moment you set it back to the recommended resolution, everything is crisp and clear. This also depends on your screen size, bigger resolution on a smaller screen compacts all the extra pixels that creates sharper images, like Apple’s Retina Display and UltraHD screens out there.

On smartphones, this is severely limited because of the graphics chips found on phones and also because of the LCD panel installed on the phone. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of high-end phones available with ultra-high resolution 4K (3840x2160) displays, but not all phones come equipped with hardware that can handle such massive resolutions. But apart from the resolution, the screen on your phone also has an internal setting called DPI (Dots

per Inch). DPI basically dictates how densely packed the pixels displayed by your GPU are, normally big screen phones come with a DPI of 240 and although the resolution of your phone can’t be changed, the DPI can be. You will need to root your phone to do this but if your phone is rooted, you can download an app called Build Prop Editor and find the line of code ‘ro.sf.lcd_density’ and change the value according to your preference. This value will also vary from device to device, depending on the screen size of the phone. Make sure you don’t increase or decrease the value too much or your phone might not boot at all. Be careful of this and change the value intelligently.  

Does playing games reduce battery life? I mean, if my battery holds my mobile for one day when it’s completely charged. If I play games for a long time, can the mobile hold its charge for the entire day?

—AakashAdhikari

Hi Aakash,

Your phone is a mobile computing device and behaves like any other laptop or computer. When you send it a lot of data, the Central Control Unit (CPU) will need to handle a much larger load, which in turn forces it to run on a much higher energy level. Not only limited to your CPU, phones also have a separate processing unit for the graphics on your phone— the Graphical Processing Unit (GPU). This unit is responsible for all the crisp and smooth visuals that games provide. Normally, in phones, these units are on a low power mode to preserve battery life, but as soon as you start gaming, both of these units start their heavy lifting, the CPU will control how the game behaves and how you interact with the games and the GPU will start processing all of the graphical data of the games. Both of these units start working at optimal capacity which in turn means, a lot of power is consumed to support this. So, gaming will affect your battery life, but not as much as you might think. Modern day phones are equipped with really low powered processing chips so no matter how demanding a game you play, their maximum power usage will be much lower than a laptop or a desktop PC, but it will still affect your battery life and although your phone may not last an entire day, the drop in battery life won’t be devastating.

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