Tips & Tricks

Miscellaneous

66. Improve Voice Control

Most phones contain some contacts stored by their first name only. You'll find "Call Joanna Smith" works a lot better than "Call Jo". So expand abbreviations and add last names to your contacts. This significantly improves the ability of voice control to understand. You can also create a new contact for the same person as an alias. Using the earbud mic also seems to improve recognition.

67. Pause Downloads

Large applications or updates can sometimes take a long time to download over a data connection and you might want to pause them whilst you check your e-mail or browse with safari.

To pause the download, tap the icon. The progress bar will stop midway and beneath the word paused appears. To continue the download, simply tap the icon again.

68. Favourites Are Not Just For Calls

Favourites and recents are great for making quick calls and returning calls to people who've phoned you. But have you noticed the little blue arrow on the right hand edge? Tap here for options to call that person back on any of their numbers, send an e-mail, or Sms, or add them to your favourites list. And in OS3.x.x you can also send contact details via Mms.

69. Rapid Calendar Scrolling

In the calendar application, tapping the arrows to move through months can be tedious. But did you know that if you hold your finger on the arrows your iphone will rapidly move through the months? Handy for setting appointments way ahead in the future.

70. Avoid Sms Embarrassment

Usually when a text message arrives the iphone displays it on the lockscreen, even if your iphone is locked. To disable this, set Text Preview to off via Settings / Messaging.

Tips & Tricks

Miscellaneous

61. Zoom Out Of Maps

Currently google maps is the only application that supports this gesture, but if you use two fingers to tap the map it zooms out.

62. Record and Play

Whilst using the voice memo recorder, you can continue to use other applications such as e-mail and safari. Simply begin recording as usual and press home to exit the voice memo application. The status bar will glow red and recording continues. Tap the status bar to return to the voice memo app.

63. A Scientific Calculator

The usual calculator provides large, easy to use buttons for basic arithmetic. If you tip the iphone sideways, you'll see a scientific calculator. You can now perform more complex calculations. OS3.x.x adds copy & paste and, if you swipe across the display, backspace.

64. Download Wallpapers

You can download wallpapers from a number of sites, including ;

http://www.flickr.com/groups/iphonewallpapers/

The easiest way to get them onto your iphone is to use mobile safari to browse the site. Navigate through flickr until a suitable wallpaper is almost full screen. Now tap and hold your finger on an image and select save image. Find the image via the camera app and set it as your wallpaper by tapping the left most icon and choosing use as wallpaper.

65. Battery Life Percentage

The 3GS allows you to add a percentage battery life indicator to the status bar. This is enabled via ; Settings / Usage.

All these tips and tricks are taking you back to basics, but if you learn one new thing, its been worth reading!

Tips & Tricks

Miscellaneous

56. Speedier Synchronization

When you connect your phone to your Mac or Pc, try to avoid plugging in via usb hub or any other device such as your Macs keyboard. Going directly into your computer can result in a speedier sync with itunes. Some brands of Pc make the matter more complicated by having different ports on the pc run at different speeds, so it might be worth experimenting to see if this applies to you.

57. Easier Listening

• Three new buttons appear when listening to audio books, podcasts, or watching video casts.
• Email: send a link to the current podcast via email.
• Skip back: jump back 30 seconds.
• Play back speed: (not in videos) double or half the play back speed.

58. Synchronise Notes

You can now synchronise notes application data with your mac or pc. Configure this from iTunes. Click the iPhone icon on the left of iTunes, then click the info tab. Scroll down to notes and enable synchronisation.

59. Surf Whilst Talking

If you are connected to a wifi network you can surf the web whilst on a call, which could be just the thing for conference calls whilst you are using speaker phone. Just press 'home' before launching safari and you can surf whilst you talk. Your phone is even smart enough to disable the click sound as you type whilst you are on the call.

60. Send Multiple Photographs

Single photographs can be sent by mms, email, and uploaded to mobile me. You can also select up to 5 to share via email, but beyond that the share button becomes disabled. You can work around this however, select as many photographs as you like and tap 'copy'. You can then paste them into a new email.

Tips & Tricks

Miscellaneous

51. Take a screenshot

You can take a screenshot from any application in the iphone simply by pressing the home and sleep/wake buttons together. The screen will flash and the camera sound will play. Such snaps are automatically saved to your camera roll and you can view it via the camera application.

52. Find Airports

Typing in the three letter airport code while in google maps will bring the airport up on the map. So for example ;

London Heathrow is LHR and John F Kennedy in New York is JFK.

53. Point The Way In Google Maps

Tap the cross hair icon once to find your current location as usual, and tap again to switch to directional mode. The map will rotate in the direction your facing and a cone appears indicating your current orientation.

54. Forward & Delete SMS

You can now forward and delete individual messages, both standard sms text messages and new multi-media messages. Tap the edit button, then tap the circles to the left of each message to select them. Then tap forward or delete.

55. Shake To Shuffle

Whilst playing music, shaking your iphone shuffles to another track at random. Cleverly the phone disables this when listening to podcasts or audio books. Shuffling works whilst the ipod app is running, but not if the phone is locked or your running another app. You can disable shuffle altogether through Settings/iPod.

Tips & Tricks

Microphone

Intro ;

The iphone earbuds have a built in microphone you can use for hands free calling. The microphone is also a button-you simply squeeze it and you'll hear a click!

This button provides quick access to a variety of features, depending upon what is currently happening on the phone.

48. Controlling Calls

You can use the earbud button to control the phone.

When the phone is ringing ;

a) Click once to answer the call

b) Press and hold for 2 seconds, then release to reject the incoming call. You'll hear two soft beeps to confirm you've declined the call

Whilst on a call ;

a) Click once to end the current call

If your already on a call and another call comes in ;

a) Click once to switch to the new call

b) Click again to switch between 2 active calls

c) Press and hold for 2 seconds, then let go to switch to the new call and end the current call

49. Controlling Music Playback

You can also use the microphone button to control playback when music or videos are playing in the ipod application ;

a) Click once to pause the current song or video

b) Click again to resume

c) Quickly click twice to skip to the next song

d) Quickly click 3 times to skip to the previous song, or to restart the current track if you are more than 3 seconds in

50. OS3.x & 3GS Enhancements

In OS3.x, the microphone button also starts and stops recording in the voice memo application.

The iphone 3GS microphone has some additional features ;

a) Volume +/- buttons control volume of calls and audio playback

b) Click and hold to activate voice control.

Next time miscellaneous tips & tricks.

Tips & Tricks

Security

39. Keep Your Data Secure

If your iphone gets stolen a stranger now has access to your contacts, appointments, emails and photos. Applications you've installed might grant access to other personal data such as your facebook account. Setting a passcode helps to protect your privacy.

Heres how ;

a) Tap settings / general / passcode lock

b) Enter a passcode that no one else can get

40. Erase All Data

There is additional security for keeping your data away from prying eyes should your phone get stolen or lost. Turn on erase all data. Now, if someone steals your phone and tries to guess your passcode, the iphone erases your personal data after 10 unsuccessful attempts

41. Encrypt Your Backup

With iTunes 8.1 or higher, you can now encrypt the back up file that contains all of your iphones data on your pc. In iTunes you'll see a new Encrypt iPhone Backup check box in the summary panel

42. Enable Find My Phone

If you subscribe to mobile me, you can enable a feature called Find My iPhone. To enable this, you need to sign up for a mobile me account at me.com and then enable the feature

43. ....Find Your iPhone

Once you've signed up, you can log in to me.com to locate your phone on a map. The find my iphone options are tucked away under the account tab in mobile me

44. Attract Attention

Once logged in at me.com, you can also send a message to your phone and get it to play an insistent sound for 2 minutes. The sound plays even if your phone is set to silent but does play at the ringer volume which makes it hard to hear if its set low

45. Remotely Lock Your iPhone

The OS3.1 update brings another level of security to your iphone. If you decide its missing temporarily and you want to keep your data safe, you can lock your iphone remotely via mobile me. From me.com select remote passcode lock and enter a new code to secure your iphone

46. Remotely Wipe Your Data

Mobile me brings another level of data security to your iphone. If you decide its been stolen, you can issue a command to your phone to delete all your data and reset it to factory defaults. Once you've done this, your iphone will no longer be able to respond to location requests which is a pity as you'll need to decide between keeping your data secure or giving the police good information on its location. Should you be reunited with your phone, you can use itunes to restore the data from your last backup

47. Reduce Roaming Charges

3G use overseas can be an expensive luxury. Here are a few suggestions on being cost effective with your phone when abroad ;

a) Reset the usage statistics when you arrive overseas and monitor your data usage

b) Turn off push email to avoid using 3G and instead use wifi when available to check email or browse the web

c) Turn data roaming off. Go into settings / general / network / and turn data roaming off

Tips & Tricks

Battery Life

32. Turn Bluetooth Off

Bluetooth adds significant drain to the battery, and if you are not using a hands free kit then you may as well turn it off. With bluetooth enabled an icon appears in the status bar. Its quite hard to see from the home screen but a lot easier against the light status bar used by most apps.

To turn bluetooth off, tap settings, the general, then bluetooth, and tap the on/off switch

33. Turn Push E-Mail Off

Keeping push e-mail turned off can save quite a lot of juice, particularly in areas with a poor signal. Go to settings, fetch new data, and turn push off and fetch data manually

34. Turn Automatic Wifi Off

Stop your phone from searching for networks anytime you are using an internet application. Go to settings, select wifi, and simply turn it off

35. Turn Off EQ

Equalization enhances key frequencies to suit certain types of music. It also requires a lot of processing power, and you can extend your battery life whilst listening to music by turning it off;

a) On the iphone, go into settings, ipod and set EQ to off

b) On the ipod touch, go into settings, music and set EQ to off

c) If youve set EQ differently for specific songs in itunes, off wont work so set EQ to flat instead

36. Close Applications

To ensure that your phone is using as little battery as possible, you should press the home button before locking so that no app remains running. This is especially true of any applications that make heavy use of GPS, such as google maps, or the 3G or wifi connection, such as safari

37. Save Power For Calls

Away from charge? If you need a working phone for making and receiving calls, reduce your use of ;

a) Applications, particularly those that use the 3G, GPS or both.

b) Games, these can use a lot of power

c) The iPod, video is particularly draining on the battery

38. Save Power For iPod

If you want to conserve juice for use as an iPod and you dont need the phone to be working, put it in airplane mode. This will turn off all the power hungry features such as the 3G data connection and phone. You can save even more power by turning off wifi. This will extend the time it'll work as an iPod

Next time, tips & tricks on security

Tips & Tricks

Typing

22. Hold Shift Whilst Typing

Sometimes you just need the next few letters to be capitalised. Typing My PC is BROKEN! or upper-case abbreviations such as LMAO. The phone allows you to use the shift key just like you can on a computer; simply hold down the shift key whilst you type.

23. Shake To Undo & Redo

When typing in any application, or when using cut, copy, and paste, you can shake the phone to undo your typing. Shake again to redo. Your phone will pop up a query to double check.

24. Double Tap For Shift Lock

The title here says it all, but this feature is disabled by default. To enable, tap the settings icon, then tap general, then keyboard. Turn enable caps lock on. Now you can double tap the shift key to turn caps lock on. It will turn blue when locked.

25. Hold keys for extras

If you hold down a letter on the keyboard, a pop up appears containing various accented versions of the character. You can do the same with certain punctuation characters to reveal alternatives.

26. Punctuate Quickly

To quickly enter punctuation or numbers while using the keyboard, press and hold the 123 button and, keeping your finger down, slide to any number or punctuation button. When you release your finger that one character will be inserted and the usual qwerty keyboard will reappear. You can use the same technique to quickly insert single digit numbers into text.

27. Alternative Currencies

One of the keyboards many secrets is that it hides multiple currency symbols for insertion into e-mails, notes, or sms messages. The default currency symbol depends on your phones settings and if you hold your finger on this you'll get the alternatives. You can combine this with our previous tip to insert any currency symbol with one lift of the finger.

28. Get A Bigger Keyboard

Turning your phone sideways will get you a bigger keyboard in all the in-built applications including notes, text messaging, e-mail, and safari. In safari however, once you are editing the address the orientation is locked, so turn your phone sideways before tapping the address bar.

29. Get A Magnifying Glass

In most apps displaying or editing text provide a magnifying glass which is handy for positioning the cursor in the right place, or selecting a particular word for copying. Hold your finger over the text for a second and a small magnifying glass appears for precise control.

30. Add To The Dictionary

If you are writing something and the iphone flags a word as mis-spelled, cancel the correction and the word will be put into the dictionary. If you use obscure words, acronyms or colorful language a lot this feature can be a time saver. Sometimes you might need to make the correction once for each different application.

31. Quickly Insert A Period

If you tap the space key twice, the iphone will instead insert a period (full stop for those of us in the uk) and a single space. You can also achieve the same effect if you use two fingers to tap the space key at the same time.

What if you actually want two spaces? Simply tap once then wait for a couple of seconds before tapping again.

Next time, tips and tricks on battery life.

Tips And Tricks

Safari Tips.

11. Use the free alternatives.
Safari is brilliant, a full web browser in a small package. Sometimes, however there are free apps available that provide an easier user interface:

• Google Mobile
• Wikipanion
• Twitterific
• Facebook

12. Plain Lazy Web Surfing.
If your heading for a .com domain when typing an address in safari, you don't have to type the www or the .com, for example, you can type apple in the address box in order to view www.apple.com

13. Look Before You Leap.
To see where a hyperlink will direct you simply hold your finger on it for a second. A new menu appears which lists the actual address at the top and some additional options. New to os3.0 are the options to copy the address to the clipboard and to open the link in a new page.

14. The Secret Behind .com.
When typing an address in safari, that .com key hides some additional features. If you hold your finger on there for a second, a range of alternatives appear. Simply slide your finger to the one you want and release to select.

15. Save Safari Images.
Images shown in the web browser can be saved to your phones camera roll or copied to the clip board. Hold your finger on the image for 2 to 3 seconds. The remainder of the page will fade, the image hilighted, and options will slide up. Tap copy to place image in the clipboard. Tap save image to save to your camers roll. Via the camers application you can then use the image as a wallpaper, send it via email, or make it a contacts image.

16. Just The Right Size.
When browsing web pages in Safari, you can double tap on a column, word or picture to fit its width to your iPhones screen. Double tap again to zoom out.

17. Share Links With Friends.
Stumbled across a web page you really want to share? Simply tap the + button at the bottom of the screen and select mail link to this page.

18. Create New App Icons.
You can add a new App icon for any web site to your home screen. Whilst browsing in Safari, tap the + button and then tap add to home screen. Some web sites supply an icon, if not then a screen shot of the current view is used. Tapping this new icon launches Safari and immediately takes you to the web site.

19. Start With A Blank Page.
Safari loads the last page it was on when you open it and on a slow connection this can take precious time. However, you can create an icon on your phone to launch Safari with a blank page. Here's how:

• Start Safari
• Tap the address bar and type 'about:blank' and tap go
• Tap the + at the bottom and choose add to home screen
• Type in a suitable name for this short cut

This simple, bright white page also makes a handy free torch application.

20. Two Fingered Scrolling.
Some web pages contain scrolling areas, such as text boxes within the page. Safari hides the scroll bars for these and of course, scrolling with one finger moves the entire page. The secret is to use two fingers. By using two fingers at once, you tell Safari to scroll the element within the page rather than the entire page.

21. Autofil To Save Time.
Your phone can remember your user name and passwords for sites you visit and autofil your details for sites you've never visited before:

• Create a contact for yourself.
• Via settings, Safari, autofil, enable both options and set my info to be yourself as a contact.
• When you begin to enter details into a new site, autofil is available above the keyboard.

Next time, Tips And Tricks will cover 'Typing'.

Tips and Tricks

Trouble Shooting

8. Restarting Properly

A hard reboot can be handy if you've an application that just refuses to start or your iphone has frozen. Hold the home button and the sleep/wake button together for 10 seconds, ignoring the slide to turn off message that appears, and the phone shuts down. Now turn on again normally.

9. Force Bad Apps To Quit

Sometimes applications appear to freeze for no reason. Hold the home button and the sleep/wake button together for 10 seconds, until the slide to turn off message appears and then release both buttons. Now hold the home button for around 6 seconds. This tells your iphone to forcibly quit the application and returns you to the home screen.

If you've an ipod touch or iphone that hasn't been upgraded to OS3.0 or above, simply hold the home button for 6 seconds to quit.

10. Start All Over Again

Done something to seriously mess up your iphone? You can reset your iphone to its last backup. Connect your iphone to your computer with the usb cable and wait for iTunes to start. Click the iphone icon and then the restore button to begin.

The next tips and tricks section will be on safari tips.

Tips and Tricks

Shortcuts

1. The fast way to the top

Reading a web page,e-mail or sms message? In all of these applications, tap anywhere on the status bar at the top to quickly scroll to the top of that page.

This is especially handy in the messaging application if you want to call the person who has just sent you a text. Where is the call button? All the way at the top of the page.

2. iPod control everywhere

You can control music on your iPhone while surfing the web or using other applications. If music is playing through the ipod application you can double press the home button to bring up playback controls without leaving the current application or unlocking the home screen.

3. Im not speaking to you

Tap one of the volume buttons to immediately silence your phone but let it appear to continue ringing for the caller. If you would like to send a call directly to voicemail, press the sleep/wake button twice, on the top right of the phone. You can also use the iphone headset by quickly pressing the microphone button twice. Now you can ignore people you dont want to talk to without letting your phone ring on and on.

4. Tap to scroll sideways

See that line of dots and the spy glass icon across the bottom of your phone indicating multiple pages of applications and spotlight? Most people swipe to move left and right, but you can also tap. This works wherever you see the line of dots indicating multiple pages, such as the weather application and in safari.

Tap anywhere along this line.

5. Back to square one

Once you've installed applications on your phone, you can end up with many, many pages of icons. Pressing the home button from any screen takes you quickly to the first page of icons so why not rearrange your icons so that all of your frequently used apps are on the first page. You can now get to any of your favorite apps in one press of the home button and a tap! Handy as those four icons in the dock is never enough....Pressing home again will swap between spotlight search and your main home screen.

6. Quick dial and launch

Finding contacts who are not in your favorites list or launching apps if you've got a lot of them is quicker with spotlight search. From the home screen press home again and type a few letters of a contacts name. You can also configure a double click of home button to take you straight to spotlight from any page via settings, general, home.

7. Swipe or delete

Whilst viewing most lists there is a hidden way to delete items. Simply swipe across the e-mail, note (in OS3.0) or sms conversation and a handy delete button appears. Sadly, this doesn't work for deleting individual text or mms messages.

Next week i'll post a section of troubleshooting tips and tricks, as i have already stated, some you will already know but hopefully you will learn something new!

iPhone Tips & Tricks

The Top Tips For Basic 3.0/3.1 Firmware

From now on every Friday ill post a section at a time of basic tips and tricks for firmware 3.0 and above, you'll be surprised by how many of them you actually did'nt know, and a lot of them you will know, they can only enhance the use of your device! The first section will be on shortcuts which i'll post tomorrow.