I have an iPhone 5 and I get excellent network coverage on the device. The problem, however, is that when I turn on the mobile data, I lose a couple of bars and the 3G connection works really slow. This does not happen everywhere but it does happen quite frequently. Is this a problem with my phone or is it a carrier problem?

—Janaki Dhungel

Dear Janaki,

The drop in signal could be because of a bad tower connection. This usually happens because you’re using a lot more data while using 3G services compared to regular phone calls. Try to get to a location with a better signal and see if your speed increases. If this doesn’t help, try removing your sim card from your phone and turn off the device. Leave it off for around five minutes, put your sim back in and turn on the device. When your device is turned on, open your settings app and navigate to the General menu. Here, tap on Reset and find an option called ‘Reset Network Settings’. Tap on this option and clear all of your network settings, you should get new settings once you remove the older settings. If you don’t get it, you can call NTC or NCell and ask them to send internet settings to your device. If you want to configure it manually, you can navigate to Mobile Settings choose Manual and input the following settings. 

 If manually configuring your settings does not help, the problem might be with your connection. You might have to move to a location with better coverage or even complain to your carrier about the slow internet so that they can fix it on their end.

I am on a Nexus 5 device and since the most recent update, I have been having battery drain issues. While earlier my phone would have easily lasted more than a day, after the recent updates, I lose battery life even when I’m not using the device. I go to sleep with a fully charged device to wake up to a phone with around 15-20 percent battery remaining. How do I fix this issue?

— Upasanna Pradhan

Dear Upasanna,

This seems to be a problem with Android 6 and Nexus 5 devices. If you Google up your issue, you’ll find a lot of people talking about the battery drain issue on various forums. Unfortunately, no substantial solution has been found and this seems to be a problem that exists on Google’s end and until they release a patch that fixes this, you might be out of luck. There is one step you can take, however, to see if it helps improve your battery life. Google suggests clearing and reformatting your cache partition. To do this, you will need to turn off your device first. After your device has been turned off, hold the Power button and the Volume Up buttons simultaneously. The device will turn on and you’ll be greeted with a screen with the word Start with an arrow drawn around it. Press the Volume Down button twice and highlight the Recover Mode option. Press the Power button once to enter Recover Mode, after a red Android with an exclamation mark appears, hold down the power button and tap (not hold) the Volume Up button. A menu should appear after this, from this menu select ‘Wipe cache partition’ option and press the power button. This should wipe your cache partition and should improve your battery life. But before you go ahead with this process, remember to back-up your data. This option should not delete the data on your phone but it’s safer to have a backup in case something does not work right during the process. 

I was an iPhone user before but have started using an Android phone as of late. I’m pretty happy with the Android phone but one problem I keep facing is that the Facebook app keeps crashing from time to time. I get a notification saying that Facebook has stopped working and I’ll have to stop it and re-open it from time to time. How do I fix this issue?

— Anil Neupane

Dear Anil,

Facebook is crashing because of some abnormalities within the cache memory of the app. Fixing this is simple. Open your settings app and navigate to your Applications Manager. Here search for Facebook and tap on the ‘Clear Cache’ and ‘Clear Data’ in that order. After all

the app’s data has been cleared, uninstall the app and reinstall it. Now try using Facebook; your force closing error should be rectified. This is a problem with many Android phones, so try to keep clearing the cache from time to time.