With Holi coming up, I have been thinking about how best to keep my phone dry when I am out and about (I had lost a phone to water damage two years ago). What is the best way to react when a phone gets soaked by water? 

—Menuka Pandey

Hi Menuka,

It goes without saying that the best way to keep your phone dry during Holi is to not carry it with you if you already know that you’re going to get wet. That, however, might not be very practical given how dependent we are to our phones right

now, particularly when you will be moving in crowds during the festival and might need to call or text your friends. So taking the appropriate preventive measure is the way to go.

If you are going out and know you are going to get drenched, investing in a water-resistant cover might be a great idea. This way, you are good to go not just for the Holi season but also for the monsoon.  As the name implies, these covers do not let water inside the casing and as a bonus, they are also quite sturdy and will cushion your phone from falls. These covers can be quite bulky though, so if you feel that it is not quite your thing then just sliding your phone into a zip-locked bag (or just any other plastic bag) will do the trick as well.

However, despite your best intentions, should your phone get drenched anyway, follow these steps to ensure it does not die on you:

1. Do not turn on your phone. If your phone is ON, turn it off immediately. When the device is on, it powers several circuits inside and since water is a great conductor, it might create a short circuit and kill the entire device.

2. Disassemble all the removable parts; remove the battery, take out the Micro SD card and SIM cards from their slots.

3. Take a cloth or paper towel to dab it dry.

4. Do not blow the device with hair dryers and fans. Blowing the smartphone with hair dryers and fans, sends water into other internal parts of the phone that the water has not reached yet, which can cause more damage.

5. Do not microwave the smartphone! That is one sure way to kill it.

6. Instead, put the phone in a bag of uncooked rice for 72 hours. The rice will draw the moisture from the phone. Once this process is complete, your phone should be good to go again. If it is still not working, despite all these steps, you might have to take it in for repairs.

Recently, I saw that Huawei showed off the world’s first smartphone driven car. A smart car with autopilot is not a new thing, but how is it different from a “smartphone-driven car”?

—Sabit Bhattarai

Hi Sabit,

You are right, integrated with AI, different manufacturers have already introduced smart cars that does not necessarily require a driver to drive it around. However, what Huawei showed is something different. Dubbed as “Road Reader,” in this project, Huawei used the Huawei Mate 10 Pro smartphone to pilot the car. This driverless car uses its AI smarts from the smartphone, which recognises objects in front of it using its AI camera to make decisions for the car.

Promising to unveil more of the technology in MWC 2018, Huawei has recently performed a test on the car. During the test, Huawei made the Mate 10 Pro the controller that governs a Porsche Panamera, which had been set up with remote controls that the phone had control over. And the test was done to send the car towards a dog sitting on the race track, with the phone recognising it and then making a decision on how to avoid it. And the car did change its track successfully when it detected a dog ahead. These are exciting times, technologically, and you will surely be seeing more of it in the coming years!

Lately, I have been having trouble with my laptop. Its fans have been making rather loud, disconcerting noises and the device is heating up, even after just a short amount of usage. What should I do to prevent these heating issues and how can I cool it down?

—Som Raj Uprety

With age, laptops are prone to overheating. The components inside the device are placed in a close proximity to each other leaving little space for the air circulation. However, with proper usage, the working temperatures of laptops can be brought down to lower values. Here are a few ways to do that:

1. If you have your laptop running for a long time, take a break. It is obvious that the electronic device heats up when its workload is prolonged.

2. Place your laptop on hard and flat surfaces. Since most laptops suck in cooling air through the bottom, uneven surfaces like a pillow or blankets obstruct the air-circulation process. With the cooling process impaired, heat starts to accumulate and the temperature starts to rise. So, do all your work on a flat desk when possible. If you cannot do so all the time, get a portable laptop stand or a laptop tray.

3. Invest in a laptop cooler or cooling pad. Since most laptops have an intake vent at the bottom, placing a cooler on its bottom to supply cool air to the device helps lower the temperature.

4. Lighten the load to limit the power consumption. Put your laptop on a power saving mode. This option prevents the laptop consuming extra power and efficiently manages the battery’s temperature. You can also shut down the programmes that use lots of system resources.

5. You can also clean your laptop to rid it of accumulated dust. However, I suggest you to leave this for a professional hand. Over time, dust and debris are accumulated in different parts of the laptop, such as the fans, air intake, and exhaust vents. This obstructs the cooling process. You can also apply fresh thermal grease to the interface between the CPU and its heat sink to regulate the temperature better.