A Thinking Man

I have been surfing the web for the past few days reading all about tips and tricks to enable me to exploit the features my new iPhone.  I thought I would compile a brief list here of some of the ones I have found most helpful.  They appear in no particular order.

A Few iPhone Tips and Tricks

• If you haven’t yet worked out how to put the Caps Lock on the keypad, go to Settings > General > Keyboard and the make sure the the Enable Caps Lock is switched on.  Once this is switched on, tap the Shift key twice in quick succession and it will turn blue.  Once blue, the Caps Lock is on.
• You don’t need to type apostrophes for contractions (don’t. didn’t etc.)  Just type the word without the apostrophe and the iPhone will automatically insert it for you.
• You don’t need make separate keystrokes to go to the punctuation screen to insert punctuation.  When you wish to insert anything from the punctuation screen, just hold down the .?123 key and then, without removing your finger, slide it across to the character that you want to insert, before lifting it.  Once lifted the character is inserted and the screen reverts to normal text entry.  So you have inserted punctuation with one hold, a slide, and a lift, rather than by the more complicated three presses and three lifts.
• Don’t bother using the Shift key to capitalize a new sentence. The iPhone does that initial capitalizing automatically.
• Learn to watch for the words that the iPhone is predicting for you when entering text.  It corrects simple keypad errors and cuts down text entry making text input fast and accurate once you get used to it.
• Don’t bother searching for a full-stop followed by a space at the end of a sentence.  Just simply press the Space Bar twice in quick succession and the iPhone will insert the stop and the space for you.
• In most applications you can easily get an even larger keypad by turning the phone into a landscape position.  However, you should note that this only works is you turn the phone into the landscape position before launching the keypad.  If the keypad is launched in portrait mode it will stay in that mode until the application is changed, even if you alter the orientation of the phone.
• If you can’t initially read the text on a page, turn to landscape format and double tap to fill the screen.
• If you want to take a picture of your screen, just hold down the button at the bottom of the screen and click the top Sleep/Wake button.  The screen will briefly flash and an image of the screen content will be placed in your photograph file.
• If you want to save a photograph that you have been sent by email, or that you have browsed on the web, put your finger on the image for a second or two.  This will cause a menu to appear giving you the option to save it.
• When using the camera, you will get a better quality picture by holding down the shoot button, pointing at the subject, steadying the phone, then releasing the shoot button, than by pointing at the subject and then pressing the shoot button.
• In many applications, just touching the status bar (where the clock resides) at the top of the screen will cause a scroll back to the top of the list or screen.
• There are three ways to browse through a long list of names in your Phone Book.  You probably know that you can select one of the letters on the side of the screen to find a group of names, and that you can use a single finger to flick quickly through a list.  However, using two separated fingers enables you to move the screen with more precision.  The two-finger precision scroll works in all other applications too, and is useful, for example, when web browsing with Safari.
• After flicking a page to get it to scroll, you can tap the page at any time to stop that movement.
• Tapping on the address in your contacts opens it up in Google Maps.
• A tap with two fingers in Google Maps zooms out.  A tap with a single finger zooms in.  One finger in, two fingers out.
• However, in Photos and Safari, double tapping (with one finger) zooms in, magnifying everything by a factor of two, and then a later double tap restores everything to its original size.
• There is a ‘Remind me to do this …’ function, but you will have to: set up an appointment for the task in the Calendar, edit the appointment to include an alert at a specific time.
• Free texting (SMS) in some countries.  If you don’t have any free texts included in your package, or if you have used them up, sign up for an AOL Instant Messaging Account (AIM) and download the free AIM Application for the iPhone.  When you want to text someone, send an AIM message to their mobile number (including the country code).  In many countries this service is free to the sender, though in countries where there is a cost to receive messages, there will be a cost to the receiver (as there would be is you sent a normal SMS).
• Easy email set up.  If you can’t be bothered to enter all the POP and SMTP settings for your email account on your phone, set yourself up with a free GMAIL or GOOGLEMAIL account and use the preinstalled software to access your new account.  (If you wanted to, you could do what I do and use my GMAIL account, not only as a functioning mail account, but also to collect mail from my other POP accounts and then forward it to my iPhone.)
• Prolong your battery life by turning off unnecessary functions.  If you don’t have a bluetooth headset or rarely use it, turn off bluetooth.  If you don’t have access to a wi-fi network turn off wi-fi.  If you rarely use GPS, turn off location services.  If you don’t live in a 3G area, turn off 3G.  If you don’t want PUSH email, turn off PUSH.  If you can survive for an hour without checking your email, set the frequency of checks to that time period, or (horror of horrors) even consider setting it to manual checking.  You have a phone that does all these things, and when you want them or need them you can easily switch them on.
• There are many free applications to enable you to connect to Twitter, but I consider Twinkle to be one of the better ones.  I like it because it enables you to select tweats from within a given distance of your present location.
• You can read a selection of (American) Magazines on your iPhone at Texterity.
• You can get a free iPint from Carling for your iPhone here.

Tags: 3G, AIM, alert, AOL, apostrophe, bluetooth. wi-fi, calendar, camera, Caps Lock, clock, email, Gmail, Google Maps, googlemail, GPS, Instant Messaging, iPhone, iPint, keypad, landscape, phone book, photograph, POP, portrait, punctuation, reminder, Safari, scroll, scrolling, SMS, SMTP, tapping, text, Texterity, tweet, Twinkle, Twitter, zoom