If you're using a mobile device, and it's
difficult to see what's on the screen
because the screen is so dim, then you
may be having a problem with the brightness.
You might be able to turn the brightness
up using the brightness controls on the mobile device itself.
In iOS, you'll find those under Settings and Display
in Brightness.
And in Android, you commonly find it
under Settings, display, and Brightness Level.
If changing those brightness levels doesn't work,
then you might have a problem with the display itself.
And you would have to replace that entire display.
Most likely, the issue is related
to the backlight that is behind the display that
shines through and allows you to see everything
that is on that LCD display.
Our mobile devices rely on wireless networks
to be able to communicate.
If you're getting intermittent connectivity
with that wireless network, you might
want to try moving closer to an access point,
if this is related to 802.11, or try a different access point.
If you're using a mobile device provider's network,
then the same thing applies.
You need to move closer to that particular antenna.
If you're not getting any connectivity to your 802.11
wireless network, you may want to check and make sure
that Wi-Fi is enabled on that system,
or try disabling and re-enabling the Wi-Fi connection.
You might also want to make sure that the security
parameters you've configured for that wireless network
are correct.
Make sure you have the right passphrase
or the right username and password
to gain access to that wireless network.
And if you think the problem may be related
to the mobile device itself, you could try a hard reset
to see if it regains access to the wireless network.
The same type of troubleshooting applies
if you're having problems connecting to a Bluetooth
device.
You want to check that Bluetooth is turned on and enabled.
Make sure that you do have a proper pairing
between your mobile device and the Bluetooth component.
And if none of those are working,
a hard reset may jumpstart your Bluetooth configuration
and get everything working.
Our mobile devices have the ability
to stream information to a third-party monitor,
or television.
Often these devices are running an Apple TV box, a Playstation,
or Roku, or some other third-party streaming
component.
This also means that different mobile devices
and different streaming devices will also
have different types of software used
to be able to perform this broadcast or streaming
function.
You want to check with the requirements
of these different devices and make sure that they are all
running compatible software.
Another important consideration is
that your mobile device and your smart TV or connected component
are all on the same wireless network.
You won't be able to stream between a private network
and guest network.
Both of those devices have to be connected to the same wireless
SSID.
And of course, the signal strength
between your device and this television or streaming device
is important.
You want to be sure you have good signal
strength on the network between your phone and television.
And you also want to be sure that the television has
good signal strength so that it can communicate out
to the internet.
A problematic application could cause your system
to freeze up so that the screen never turns on.
You pick up your phone.
You touch the screen.
And it doesn't seem to respond to anything that you're doing.
And it remains black on the screen.
At this point, you may not have many options available.
You can try a soft reset by holding down the power button
and sliding to power off and then powering back
on with the power button.
But if it's completely frozen, you
may have to perform a hard reset by holding down the power
button and the Home button, or holding down
the power button and the volume button for 10 seconds.
Many Android devices allow you to remove the battery
and replace it and power back on.
You may be able to hold down the power button and the volume
button down until the system resets.
Some phones have different combinations
of keys to perform a reset.
And some phones do not have a way
to press keys to perform a reset.
Some apps having a problem on a mobile device
may have the application not loading at all,
or it may be very slow once it finally loads onto the system.
One of the things you can do is to restart the phone
by holding down the power button and powering off.
You can also try just stopping that individual app
and restarting it again.
On iOS, you would double tap the Home button,
or you would slide up from the bottom,
and then you would slide that app up and off of the phone.
In Android, you can select Settings, Apps,
select the individual app, and choose Force Stop.
And if this continues to happen, you
can contact the developer of the application,
or try downloading the latest version of the app
for your mobile device.
We use extensive encryption on our mobile devices
because we want to be sure that our information remains safe.
If you're using Microsoft Outlook to send and receive
emails, then all of those communications
are encrypted by default. This requires
that you have a private key on your mobile device
that's able to encrypt and decrypt this information.
You can't decrypt these emails unless you
have that private key installed on your mobile device.
Often, a system administrator will
use a Mobile Device Manager or an MDM
to be able to manage all of these mobile devices
and install the individual private keys.
If you're in an area with very bad reception
to a mobile carrier, you may find
that you're losing your battery strength very quickly.
Your phone may be trying to reconnect constantly
to that mobile network.
And all of that communication will quickly
eat away at your battery life.
One of the things you can do to extend the battery life
is to disable anything you might not be using.
So if you're not connecting to 802.11, or Bluetooth,
or using GPS functionality, you may
want to disable those particular radios.
You might also want to check to see
if a particular application may be using
more battery than another app.
One way to do this on both iOS and Android
is check under Settings and Battery.
And the problem may be related to the battery itself.
The batteries in our mobile devices
only can support a certain number of recharge cycles.
So you may find that a newer battery works much better
than one that is older.
Heat is the enemy of any electronic device.
So you want to be sure that you keep
your phone from overheating.
If your phone does get too hot, it will automatically
shut down to prevent any damage of the internal components.
This heat can come from many different sources,
not just leaving it out in the sun,
but simply charging or discharging the battery,
or using an application that uses a lot of CPU.
Even using the display light on your phone
causes a little bit of heat.
To see if this heat is coming from an application,
you can check the app usage chart
to see if one particular app tends
to be using a lot more CPU cycles than another.
You also want to be sure to leave your phone out
of direct sunlight at the beach, or on the dashboard
of your car.
It will quickly overheat and cause the system
to automatically shut down.
Sometimes, an app will cause an entire mobile device
to stop working.
Nothing's changing on the screen.
It doesn't respond to any button presses.
And nothing you do seems to make a difference.
In those cases, you can try a soft reset
to see if you're able to hold down the power key
and power off normally.
But often, it may require a hard reset.
In iOS, that's holding the power button and the Home key,
or holding the power button and the volume key for 10 seconds.
On Android, there are different combinations
for performing a hard reset, including holding down power,
home, and volume buttons.
If you find that your mobile device is constantly freezing,
you may want to perform a factory reset.
This will delete all of the applications and data
from your phone and restore everything
as if it was fresh from the factory.
At that point, you can reinstall the applications and data
that you need and see if this freezing problem happens
to disappear.
Our mobile devices are also multimedia devices.
So the audio from these devices becomes very important.
If we're not getting any sound from a particular app,
we may want to check the volume settings
for the overall device.
But there may also be separate volume settings
for the app that's in use.
You may want to check to see if the app happens to be older,
or has a bug.
You may want to delete and reload that app.
And you may want to try headphones
to see if the problem is with the speakers
on the mobile device, or if it's not
putting out any audio at all.
If the audio starts, but then it abruptly stops,
you may have two applications that are trying
to play audio at the same time.
You may want to try keeping one of those apps
open in the foreground to see if the starting and stopping
process continues.
And if you're not getting any sound
on the device from any app, you may
want to perform a software update
and make sure the mobile device is
running at the latest version.
If none of that is working, it may take a factory reset
to see if you're able to regain audio from that device.
Most of the input on our mobile devices
is done through the touch screen digitizer that's
on the front of the device.
But occasionally, you may be trying
to click one part of the screen, and another part
tends to respond, or perhaps nothing
is responding on the screen.
One of the things you can try is to close some apps
and free up some resources.
That might help with some of the contention
you're seeing with the digitizer.
It might also require a soft reset
or a hard reset of that device to reset the digitizer.
And it may be that the problem is with the digitizer itself,
which would require a hardware replacement, which usually
means you have to replace the entire screen to replace
the digitizer.
It's also possible to lock yourself out
of your own mobile device.
If you try inputting the same unlock
code over and over and over again,
you may find that you've locked yourself out.
On iOS, if you have 10 failed attempts in a row,
iOS will erase everything on the phone.
To get your data back, you would need to restore from iTunes
or restore from an iCloud backup.
You can disable this automatic erasing function.
And instead, the mobile device will
have delays that increase every time a failed attempt is
made at the passcode.
The Android operating system can also
lock or wipe the entire phone after a number
of failed attempts.
And you would need to use the Google
login to unlock that phone.
Although we as the end users never see it,
our mobile devices have extensive logs that
are saved on these devices.
But you would need the correct software tools
to be able to connect to the device
and view all of this log information.
There are system logs that show you exactly what the phone is
doing at any particular time.
And there are usually crash logs available that
would show you when problems occurred in the past.
To be able to view these logs in iOS,
you would need the Xcode application.
And for Android, you would use Logcat.