Tips and Tricks: Mobile Phone Troubleshooting

 

Basically, how to use your phone like a boss…

In this issue of Steve writes a blog, I will be demonstrating a few extremely useful troubleshooting methods by using a mobile phone. Primarily, I focus around a rooted Android Operating system due to its ease of use and my personal preference, but other devices may work for most of these tips as well. Read on and enjoy!

Test Hosted Website Public Access

Is your site not loading from your home, work, corporate or other network? Do this:

1. Turn off your WiFi
2. Load your site on your Mobile Phone.

I prefer to do this in Chrome. Since it is my main Browser on all devices, all my credentials are saved on any device I am signed into with my Google Account. If the site loads via the mobile network, then the issue you are experiencing is likely a local networking issue. See if you can load other websites, ping your own site or browse your site by IP.

You Can Ping from a Mobile Phone

Just load your favorite Terminal Emulator and run basic Linux Commands all day, such as ping. Do yourself a favor and either get a Terminal Keyboard installed or use a Bluetooth Keyboard. It makes working on Android much easier for these tasks. If you are not Linux inclined, fret not. The beauty of Smartphones shines through—there is an App for everything. My favorite app for quick Ping and HTTP tests is HTTPing. This tool will let your run a ping, return Status codes and measure latency. Just remember that Mobile Data Networks Latency is generally pretty high when you run this tool on the go. And here’s a fairly handy link if you need to check Status codes.

Speaking of the Terminal Emulator

You can do much more than Ping. Mobile Phones are just small computers, and with the right tools you can also run:

• Nslookup
• SSH
• WGET
• Telnet
• FTP
• Traceroute
• Many more

One of those “Right Tools” is Tiny Utils. This allows you to run commands you are used to having while working at a GNU/Linux Terminal. Get your research on: check out the full list of BusyBox commands. Some commands may require Root Access. If you are unfamiliar with Root and basic GNU/Linux commands, steer clear and download App’s with specific purposes instead.