Often, smartphone users, when trying to explore their capabilities, are faced with the fact that they accidentally disable gadgets. Why the usual zooming in Android can lead to the loss of personal data, and why it is worth turning off Always-On Display (AOD) in the iPhone settings – in the material of Gazeta.Ru.
Smartphones running the Android operating system have many hidden settings, some of which are available after performing certain actions. So, if you repeatedly click on the “Build number” item in the “About device” section, a new menu “For developers” will appear in the settings list. In this section, you can find many useful features, but some of them are still not recommended for inexperienced users to activate.
One of the useful and at the same time dangerous features for a smartphone in the developer settings is the ability to change the display scale, which is called “Minimum Width”. Initially, this value is set by default in the device so that the scale matches the resolution and diagonal of the device. If the user wants more information to fit on the screen, he can change these numbers.
For example, instead of 409 dpi, you can specify 480 dpi, after which the screen will accommodate more elements. This can be useful, for example, for users who frequently scroll through the social media feed.
But it’s better not to get carried away with experiments with this function – if you set a value that is atypical for the device, the smartphone will simply stop turning on.
The correspondent of Gazeta.Ru faced such a problem, who, when changing the scale “for the sake of interest”, decided to indicate the value of 800 dpi – after that the device screen darkened. The smartphone tried to reboot, but it never turned on, falling into the so-called “bootlap” – an eternal reboot.
“Everyone can experience something like this. It is enough to mistakenly prescribe an extra number. There are many stories on the Internet of users who made such a mistake.
The only thing that will help in this situation is resetting the device to factory settings via Recovery, but this will completely delete all content, including important media files and documents.
Smartphone users often update their devices to the latest firmware versions and do not even think about what this might turn out to be. Along with new features and fixing known bugs, developers often “introduce” new bugs into the firmware. And we are talking about the so-called stable assemblies, which are considered to be “ideal” in terms of performance.
Experienced users know that in the early days it is better not to update your device, regardless of whether it is Apple , Samsung or Xiaomi. First you need to wait for feedback from other users, bloggers and journalists.
However, the firmware can be installed without user intervention, as many people turn on the “Auto Software Update” item on their smartphones. The first owners of the iPhone 14 Pro regretted this decision – in the fall of 2022, they complained on the forums that after auto-updating to iOS 16.0.3, their smartphones stopped turning on. So, one of the users of the iPhone 14 Pro Max put his smartphone on charge and went to bed, and in the morning he found a “turned into a brick” smartphone that freezes when turned on. Then the members of the forum came to the conclusion that the problem was connected precisely with the automatic update.
Updating the firmware can not only disable the smartphone, but also simply spoil the impression of using it or break some device functions. Often, after the release of new firmware, thematic forums are filled with complaints about “falling off” mobile communications, overheating, increased power consumption, spontaneous reboots and other errors. For example, users of Xiaomi devices faced the fact that the front camera broke in their Redmi Note 10 Pro smartphones .
And even Google does not always release fully working updates for its branded Pixel smartphones – in May 2023, Pixel 6 and 7 users complained about fast battery drain and excessive heating of devices shortly after a security patch update.
Many smartphones with OLED screens have an Always-On Display (AOD) feature, which shows the date, notifications and other important information even when the screen is off. The “trick” is that when the screen is turned off, some of the pixels continue to glow. Actually, they form the information that is always displayed on the smartphone. This is a really useful option, but it has hidden disadvantages.
Firstly, the always-on screen, although it works at minimum brightness, still consumes up to ten “extra” percent of the battery charge per day.
Secondly, due to the enabled AOD function, the most active pixels may burn out. As a result, there is a so-called afterimage of those interface elements that are permanently displayed on the off screen: clock, date, weather, and more.
For example, in February 2023, just five months after the start of sales of the iPhone 14 Pro Max, smartphone ownersbegan to complain just about the problem of afterimage.
Every year, OLED manufacturers improve their displays, making pixel burn-in an increasingly rare problem.
But still, the only way to keep a “clean” and not burned-out screen at the moment is to refuse to use Always-On Display. You should also prevent the maximum brightness of the display and move static icons and widgets on the screen every few weeks.
The smartphone system has special codes that are driven in as a USSD command in the dialer and, as a rule, begin with the symbols “asterisk” and “hash”.
Some of these codes are “harmless”, that is, with their help it will not be possible to somehow “harm” the smartphone even to an inexperienced user. They can indicate the IMEI of the smartphone or the “dead” zones of the touch screen.
But there are those whose activation can lead to unpleasant and unforeseen consequences.
For example, you can get into hidden network settings, experimenting with which, you can cause a failure in the smartphone’s GSM module responsible for communication. There are also codes that activate the reset of all smartphone settings to the factory state, which can lead to the loss of important personal data.
Modern Android smartphones come with a lot of preinstalled apps. Many of them are systemic and are necessary for the proper functioning of the device, but the other part is often useless garbage. In this regard, users are trying to remove them. Some programs are erased without problems, and some – only with the help of third-party software and a computer.
Often, inexperienced users, in an attempt to free up memory in their smartphone and reduce the load from unnecessary applications, delete important system programs. Sometimes this happens through negligence. And this usually leads to the fact that the gadget simply stops turning on.
So, one of the users of the w3bsit3-dns.com forum decided to remove 42 pre-installed services at once using the ADB APP Control program. This experiment led to the fact that the enthusiast’s smartphone stopped turning on.
“Successfully deleted, rebooted the phone and caught a bootlap: the device hangs after the MIUI logo appears,” the author of the post shared.
Similar cases on the forums are common. The only way to avoid this is not to completely uninstall applications if it is not provided by the operating system. Including it is not recommended to disable applications that cannot be removed if you do not know what functions they have.
