Long gone, but now back… sort of. :)
(Answer requested by Gabriel Austria) Most Android phones use utterly-standard USB connections. Even if the phone’s screen is cracked or otherwise damaged, if you can still turn the phone on and log in (by any means — face, voice, fingerprint, pattern, password…), you usually can retrieve the phone’s user data via USB. Just plug the…
(Answer requested by Brandon Dotson) There’s no master “off” switch. But there an often-overlooked, semi-stand-alone applet within Android’s Settings that comes close: Permissions Manager. This is not the app-by-app Permissions settings you may have already seen and used in Settings/Apps. Android’s Permissions Manager sorts all your apps at once by permission-type, letting you see, at…
(Answer requested by Chandrakant Godhani) Assuming the battery is charged and OK, or the laptop is plugged in to a known-good power supply, the most common cause of “PC runs for a while and then stops” is heat buildup: Some component is running hot, and the PC is shutting itself down to prevent permanent damage…
The world’s first cell phone call took place 47 years ago today, using a prototype Motorola DynaTAC 8000X — the first fully-portable, commercial cell phone. A full charge took roughly 10 hours and yielded 30 minutes of talk time (no data, of course). When it went on sale, it cost $3,995; equivalent to almost $10,000…
(Answer requested by Sameer Chakma.) No, if you mean your question literally: At its heart, a computer’s heat sink is usually just a piece of inert metal. There’s nothing to break or stop working. But I suspect you mean: “Is it possible for a PC’s heat-removal system to malfunction?” and that answer is a definite…
(Answer requested by Gabriel Yeung) Read multiple third-party SSD reviews from reliable sites and publications (examples)— don’t rely on “star ratings” on a vendor’s own site. Compare the manufacturer’s claimed SSD performance against the actual, delivered, real-world performance via sites such as https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/ and PassMark.com SSD ratings. Choose an SSD brand and vendor (they may…
(Answer requested by Alexander Junior Souto) In smartphones, the width of the device — and therefore its screen — is more or less constrained by the width of human hands and pockets. Space not wasted on a needlessly fat bezel can be used to enlarge the display area, improving the user experience by making the…
(Answer requested by Nima Jooyandeh) Android, Apple, it doesn’t matter: Yes, any charger cord can wear out and lose effectiveness over time. Charger cords are technically cables — an assemblage of seperate wires wound together into a bundle;4 and coated with a plastic insulator. (The separate wires in USB charger are often literally only about…
(Answer requested by Elynn Quirk) Personally? Nope. Not at all. I doubt I use my keyboard’s backlight even 0.1% of the time. I’d probably feel differently if I were regularly using the laptop in situations with poor lighting. But if there’s enough light to work, there’s usually enough light for me to to see the…
(Answer requested by Nikola Cvetanovski) It’s probably not significant, but that really depends on a host of variables. Let’s try a thought experiment, where you can make assumptions about the variables: Let’s say the phone is on, but with the screen off. No non-system software is running (ie no other apps besides the stopwatch app);…
