iPhone reference : Tips © Copyright 2007 Clay Irving

Tips and Tricks

• If you're in camera mode and you change the phone from tall to landscape, the picture is taken in landscape.

• If you select a photo for a contact from the iPhone, the selected photo is shown full screen for caller ID -- If you add the contact photo in your address book and sync it with the iPhone, the contact photo will not display full screen for caller ID. It will be displayed as a thumbnail. If you added the photo in your address book and synced it to your iPhone, just edit the contact, edit the picture and save it. After you do that, the photo will display full screen for caller ID.

• The phone shows up in iPhoto (turn off in image capture), you can use 'Camera is not Apple iPhone' in a smart playlist.

• Suggested folders for contact photos:
  • Contacts folder - A folder for contacts to be displayed for caller ID
  • Wallpaper folder - A folder for iPhone wallpapper
  • Logos folder - A folder for corporate logos to be displayed for caller ID

• Keeping the favorites screen open allows you to unlock the screen then dial with three motions.

• The home button can be used to access unlocking instead of sleep wake.

• Some of you iPhone users have been complaining about the period key being banished to the numbers and symbols keyboard layout. Well quit your whining, here's a quick and easy way to get around that. All you have to do is press and hold the numbers key, and without lifting your finger slide it over to the period (or any other punctuation mark) and let go. Ba-da-bing you've got yourself a period and the keyboard has automatically switched back to letters again. You can use this tip to enter any non-alpha character without switching keyboards.

• To use the CAPS LOCK feature, make sure it is enabled in the General Settings. To use it, simply double-tap on the shift key. The shift key will turn blue.

• Holding down on a link shows the link's URL.

• To organize the favorite contacts in the order you like, tap Edit in the top left corner and then drag the 3 stacked up bars on the right the name to move the contact around. This also works for the World Clock.

• You can choose to sort the contact list by first names or last names. Just go to settings/Phone/Contacts/Sort

• When typing with the virtual keyboard, the characters are "punched out" only when you take off your finger. So if you punched the wrong letter, without lifting your finger drag it to the correct letter (usually the neighboring one) and then lift. By doing so you don't have to delete the wrong entered letter before you type in the right one.

• Every try to play music for a friend over the phone by holding your phone up to a speaker? (Admit it, you know you have). Well, if you're talking to someone with the iPhone's speakerphone, and you go to the iPod, you can play the music from the iPhone's external speaker and the listener will hear it.

• In Safari, when you've scrolled down to the bottom of a page, and you want to go back to the top- just tap on the top bar of the phone (where "AT&T" and the time are) and the page jumps right back up to the beginning.

• If you want all your contacts organised by persons, companies, places, relatives, coworkers... (you name it)... you create such groups in the Address Book and then when syncing, you select those groups and not the whole list of your contacts.

• You can only add a call (conference call) if you initiate the call. If someone calls you, you can not add a call.

• One of the alarm clock functions is a countdown timer that you can set from 1 minute to 23 hours, 59 minutes. At the end of the specified time interval, you can specify an audible alarm (one of the installed ringtones) or you can have the iPod sleep. That option is handy if you don't want to fall asleep with music or video playing indefinitely (or until the battery drains).

• Don't bother typing the apostrophe when typing words like "I'd", "I'll", "can't", "won't", "shouldn't", etc. iPhone will put them in for you.

• No need to use shift to type the words "I" or "iPhone". iPhone will fix it for you.

• You don't have to hit the "ABC" button to switch back to typing letters if you are at the end of a word. Just hit space and iPhone will switch back.

• Hit the power button while listening to music to disable the screen (save power).

• When browsing a web page in Safari on an iPhone, one tap of the top status bar (signal strength, time, etc.) brings you back to the top of the page, complete with the URL field visible. Pretty handy!

• To check:
  • Data (number of text messages) remaining, dial *data# (*3282#). Press the Send key. Within seconds, your balance is delivered via text message to your phone screen. You'll also see your next bill's due date as well as your last payment posted.
  • Balance remaining, dial *BAL# (*225#). Press the Send key. Within seconds, the minutes remaining are delivered via text message to your phone screen. These minutes will be broken down by type.
  • Minutes remaining, dial *MIN# (*646#). Press the Send key. Within seconds, a breakdown of your remining data usage will be delivered via text message to your phone screen. The remaining data usage will be broken down by type.

• To make a payment, dial *PAY (*729) and you'll get immediate access to our automated voice system. Follow the prompts to pay your current bill with a checking account, debit card, or credit card.

• If you double click on a phone number in a webpage, your iphone will call the number.

• In Safari, hold down your finger before you click on a link for a couple of seconds and a pop-up will appear for you so that you can see where you are going to go.

• Before you take a picture make sure to wipe the camera lens. Oils from your fingers get on the lens and tend to flare out the highlights. A simple wipe ( even if it's with your tee shirt) will make a huge difference in the final quality of the image.

• If you want to send the URL of a Web page you’re viewing to a friend, tap the Address Bar, then tap Share. A new e-mail message, containing the URL, will open in Mail; just choose a recipient(s), add any comments you want to include, and tap Send.

• If you find a phone number in Safari that you'd like to call -- say the phone number at a restaurant you'd like to make reservations at -- there's no need to jump to the phone component. Just tap the number; iPhone will dial it for you. (This is also the case with phone numbers and URL embedded in e-mails and SMS chats; tapping either one will place a call or open a Web page, respectively.)

• When in Safari, holding your fingertip down on a link instead of tapping it produces an information balloon that displays the underlying URL. The same thing happens in Mail when you hold a link, which makes this tip much more useful. Now when those "account update" Email messages appear, you can press and hold on the link to find out if you're really going to be taken to the site the e-mail claims.

• There doesn't appear to be a way to the mark a read message as unread on the iPhone, but its in there. While viewing a message, tap Details, which reveals a Mark As Unread option; tap it, and the next time you view your Inbox, the message will display the Unread indicator.

• Say you try to send an Email, but the iPhone can't get network access. You might think your message has disappeared completely, but don't worry -- its still on your phone. A temporary Outgoing folder is created, and the message winds up in there. You can access this temporary folder from the main screen of the sending account; the folder will disappear once network access is available and the message is sent.

• You don't have to enter the whole URL address. For instance, just typing "apple" is enough instead of the "www.apple.com".

• Andrew Escobar explains how to use OpenDNS to change iPhone's Wi-Fi DNS settings to connect to the Internet.

• Macworld iPhone Sync Tricks
  Tricks to sync to multiple computers and syncing multiple calendars.