I have a Colors XFactor X115 phone which had Android 4.2.2. Recently, I updated it to 4.4.2 at a service center. After the update, my phone charges faster but the battery drains quickly. If I fully charge my phone and unplug it from charger, the battery starts draining even when I keep my phone in flight mode. Is this because the update is not supported by the phone set?How do I solve this problem? I can’t even find a replacement battery in the market. Will downgrading the Android version back to 4.2.2 help?

—Rramesh Shrestha

Hi Rramesh,

The new version of Android could be the culprit, if these issues started manifesting only after the upgrade. There are many reasons why your phone keeps draining the battery, from malicious apps to a bad kernel, but first check if you have any applications that might be keeping your phone awake. An Android phone goes into a power-saving deep sleep mode when you’re not actively using your phone but sometimes, apps misbehave and will stop your phone from entering this low-power mode. Apps like Facebook will do this more often because they keep syncing with their servers from time to time, waking the phone every time they do. So try to see if you can identify these applications and uninstall them. If the problem still persists, you will need to downgrade to the previous Android version. It should not be difficult to downgrade to an Android version that came preinstalled in your phone, a simple Factory Reset should bring you back to what your phone was like when you first bought it.

I have a Dell Vostro 1014 laptop. I bought it 6 years ago and I haven’t changed the battery or the charger. But recently I faced problems like laptop overheat and shutdown. So I changed the charger and bought a new battery thinking that they were causing it, but the problem persists. This gets worse while using the Internet. Is this because of a dirty cooling fan? What would you suggest?

—Yushan Basnet

Hi Yushan,

This happens when there is a lot of junk inside your laptop. The air cooling system in laptops often attracts quite a lot of dirt. They enter the laptop and block vital airway ports blocking smooth airflow into your CPU, the component that heats up the most. When this happens, you’ll experience very high heat output from your system, your performance will decrease and your system fan will spin faster making a lot of noise in the process. The system will also shutdown automatically when your CPU temperature reaches a critical level, this is a safety mechanism that helps avoid permanent damage to the system. To fix this, you will need to open up your computer and remove all the accumulated dirt inside the system. I do not recommend doing this by yourself; I recommend taking it to a repair shop. They should charge you around Rs 800 - Rs 1,000. Also keep in mind that CPUs have a thermal paste on top of them that helps keep the CPU temperature low, these thermal pastes lose their cooling ability with age so make sure the technician you take it to replaces the thermal paste on your CPU.

I listen to a lot of music on my phone but my phone has terrible sound. Is there any way I can improve the sound output of my phone?

—Yural

Hi Yural,

Good sound quality depends mostly on your earphones, if you have a good pair of earphones, no matter how terrible the sound output of your phone is, the inbuilt equalisers on your earphone will give you a good audio experience. Your phone is also partly responsible for your auditory experience and is also manually configurable, unlike the equalisers built into your earpiece. Try installing Noozxoide EIZO-rewire PRO, from Play Store, it has a really good audio processing system and will give your music the much needed clarity and bass, manually configurable according to your preferences.

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