The answer to question 2 is yes -
Long Press your power button and you will get a screen that has options to:
Power Off
Reboot
Airplane Mode
The above is true for pure 4.4, 5.0.1 and 5.1.1
Hope this helps in some small way........
Tell them to turn off Google Now as previously posted by tomla - fixed my issue on KitKat 4.4.2 with maps 9.1.0 immediately.
This was on a BLU Studio 5.0C HD unlocked running on the AT&T USA network.