IPHONE TIPS AND TRICKS : PART 2
iPhone Tips and Tricks #21 - How to make full screen contact pictures
Browse to the contact and tap edit. Tap on the photo. Tap edit photo. After it opens in fullscreen, tap set photo and save the contact.
iPhone Tips and Tricks #22 - Customize the iPod buttons
The iPod module on the iPhone starts out with buttons along the bottom for summoning four lists: Playlists, Artists, Songs, and Videos.
What about Albums, Genres and Composers?
They’re there, all right, but hidden; you have to tap "More" to see them.
But what if you use those lists more often than Artists or Songs? No problem: you can replace one of those starter buttons with a list of your own.
Tap "More", and then tap the "Edit" button (upper-left corner). You arrive at the Configure screen. Here’s the complete list of music-and-video sorting lists: Albums, Podcasts, Audiobooks, Genres, Composers, Compilations, Playlists, Artists, Songs, and Videos.
To replace one of the four starter icons, use a finger to drag an icon from the top half of the screen downward, directly onto the existing icon you want to replace. It lights up to show the success of your drag.
When you release your finger, you’ll see that the new icon has replaced the old one. Tap "Done" in the upper-right corner.
iPhone Tips and Tricks #23 - Loudest speaker volume ever
I think I’ve found a way to get the loudest speaker volume on an iPhone or have stupidly messed up my tiny speaker on my iPhone. But the honest true, it works NICE & CLEAR…
I was playing around with trying to get my iPhone speaker volume louder and my ringtones, but I wasn’t happy with the different changes on my "SystemSoundMaximunVolume.plist" so, I grabbed a needle and sticked it into every single tiny hold on the bottom left corner of the iPhone. I think it was dirty in there or something because now this is EXACTLY how I wanted it since day one… LOUD!!! I really hope I didn’t mess up the speaker though.
Has anyone done this? Maybe my speaker was dirty and it’s now cleaned up? or I have sticked the needle into the speaker without messing it up and it made some air ways and made it louder? Whatever it is, I now love the speaker phone.
iPhone Tips and Tricks #24 - Save images in safari and mail
Just touch and hold an image in Safari or Mail, an action sheet will be presented to enable you to save the image. The image will get stored in the "Saved Photos" library of the Photos app.
iPhone Tips and Tricks #25 - Access iPod controls or phone favorites instantly
Go to "Settings -> General -> Home Button". Double taping the home button goes to "Home", "Phone Favorites" or "iPod Controls".
iPhone Tips and Tricks #26 - Forward/rewind music & video
Press and hold the skip forward/back arrows to fast forward or rewind rather than skip tracks. Also, press on the album art to manually FF/rewind.
iPhone Tips and Tricks #27 - Use iPhone as a Modem
You can use iPhone 3G or later as a modem to connect, or tether, your computer to the Internet. You can connect iPhone to your computer using the Dock Connector to USB Cable, or via Bluetooth.
In Settings, choose "General -> Network -> Internet Tethering".
Slide the Internet Tethering switch to On.
Connect iPhone to your computer:
USB: Connect your computer to iPhone, using the Dock Connector to USB Cable. In your computer’s Network services settings, choose iPhone. On a Mac, a pop-up window appears the first time you connect, saying "A new network interface has been detected". Click Network Preferences, configure the network settings for iPhone, then click Apply. On a PC, use the Network Control Panel to configure the iPhone connection.
Bluetooth: On iPhone, choose "Settings -> General -> Bluetooth" and turn on Bluetooth. Then refer to the documentation that came with your computer system software to pair and connect iPhone with your computer. When you’re connected, a blue band appears at the top of the screen. Tethering remains on when you connect with USB, even when you aren’t actively using the Internet connection.
Monitor your cellular data network usage: In Settings, choose "General -> Usage".
iPhone Tips and Tricks #28 - Earbud Cord Switch
Without close inspection, you’d have a hard time telling the iPhone’s white stereo earbuds apart from a regular iPod’s-but don’t get them mixed up. The iPhone’s earbuds have a tiny, embedded clicker/microphone partway down the right earbud cord.
That’s right, "Clicker/Microphone". The tiny bulge is the microphone for phone calls. But if you pinch the bulge, you’ll find that it clicks.
Pinch once to answer an incoming phone call. Pinch twice to dump the call to voicemail. (You can also tap or double-tap the "Sleep/Wake" switch on top of the iPhone for the same functions.)
During music or video playback, pinch once to pause the music; pinch again to resume playback. During music playback, double-pinch to skip to the next song.
iPhone Tips and Tricks #29 - Double-Tapping
Double-tapping is actually pretty rare on the iPhone. It’s not like the Mac or Windows, where double-clicking the mouse means "open". On the iPhone, you open something with one tap.
A double tap, therefore, is reserved for three functions:
In Photos, Google Maps, and Safari (the Web browser), double-tapping zooms in on whatever you tap, magnifying it by a factor of two.
In the same programs, as well as Mail, double-tapping means, "restore to original size" after you’ve zoomed in. (Weirdly, in Google Maps, you use a different gesture to zoom out: tap once with two fingers. That gesture appears nowhere else on the iPhone.)
When you’re watching a video, double-tapping eliminates or restores letterbox bars.
See, the iPhone’s screen is bright, vibrant, and stunningly sharp. It’s not, however, the right shape for videos.
Standard TV shows are squarish, not rectangular. So when you watch TV shows, you get black letterbox columns on either side of the picture.
Movies have the opposite problem. They’re too wide for the iPhone screen. So when you watch movies, you wind up with letterbox bars above and below the picture.
Some people are fine with that. At least when letterbox bars are onscreen, you know you’re seeing the complete composition of the scene the director intended.
Other people can’t stand letterbox bars. You’re already watching on a pretty small screen; why sacrifice some of that precious area to black bars?
That’s why the iPhone gives you a choice. If you double-tap the video as it plays, you zoom in, magnifying the image so that it fills the entire screen.
Part of the image is now off the screen; now you’re not seeing the entire composition originally broadcast. You lose the top and bottom of TV scenes, or the left and right edges of movie scenes.
If this effect winds up chopping off something important - some text on the screen, for example - restoring the original letterbox view is just another double-tap away.
iPhone Tips and Tricks #30 - How to maximize iPhone battery life?
a. Turn down the LCD. The new iPhone’s screen is brighter. You may save your battery power by changing "Settings -> Brightness". I keep mine at 10% brightness.
b. Turn off Vibrate in Games. Playing a game with vibrate happening frequently is an unnecessary battery suck. If you can turn it off.
c. Limit use of A-GPS tracking. GPS tracking is still pretty useless after you've gained your bearings, since there isn't a turn by turn navigation mode for driving. I exit out of maps once I've got the directions in my mind, and if I lose myself again, I just start maps up once more.
d. Turn off Wi-Fi new network scanning or Wi-Fi.
e. Toggle off 3G till ready.
f. Buy Apps and Songs in iTunes at your computer not over Wi-Fi or Apps over 3G.
g. Set the Autolock to 1 or 2-minutes. It can be set under "Settings -> General -> Autolock".
h. Use programs with 3D less often. Not surprisingly, I've noticed that when I play games rendering 3D, battery life drops. Using the graphics chips more intensely will crank up power usage, but maybe the drain is also because of the nature of gaming: Unlike email or browsing, gaming is a full-time, full attention endeavor that also keeps the CPU, GPU and LCD going full-time. (I'd like to think this is a more useful tip than "don't use your iPhone" but maybe it's not something you can avoid if you're a gaming addict.)
I. Set Push to Off, and Set Fetch Time. Push email isn't that useful for me because I know I'm getting emails all day long and that I have to be checking all the time. Push does use more juice than the fetch mode, which checks for calendar, contact and email syncing at set intervals of 15 minutes to an hour. I set mine to 1 hour unless I'm out of the office. If you seldom update your contacts and calendars, you might even be better off syncing by cable to iTunes, while you pick up a charge.
J. Stay Juiced. If you're at computer or in a car, you should try to use a cigarette adapter or USB cable to pick up a few minutes of charge.
iPhone Tips and Tricks #31 - How to use iPhone as an external hard drive?
As an iPod owner, you can easily drag and drop files from computer to iPod when connecting to computer via USB cable. When it comes to iPhone however, Apple does not allow us to use it like an external hard drive.
Discover is a free mobile file manager application that allows you to manage, store, view and transfer files with other computers or iPhones, within the same Wi-Fi network. It also allows you to access local or public servers on the Internet, both within or without Wi-Fi connections. In Apple Store, the average rating for the current version is 3-starts.
iPhoneBrowser is Windows based file browser for your iPhone. It features drag and drop uploading to your phone, automatic and manual backups of files on your phone, previews of text and picture files and very cool icons.
iPhone Tips and Tricks #32 - How to create custom ringtones?
One of the things that Apple hasn’t made easy for iPhone owners is providing a way to create custom ringtones in Windows. If you’re a Mac owner you can use GarageBand, but Apple doesn’t provide that application on Windows. Instead what they expect you to do is purchase a song for $0.99, and then convert it to a ringtone for another $0.99.
Here a couple ways to create and use your own custom ringtones on the iPhone:
iTunes. You can actually convert a DRM-free song into a ringtone using only iTunes with a few steps:
1. Start iTunes and find the DRM-free song you want to convert to ringtone. Right-click on it and select the Get Info option.
2. On the Options tab locate the Start Time and End Time options. This is where you want to specify the portion of the song you wanted converted into a ringtone. Check both of the boxes, and make sure your ringtone is under 30-seconds. Press OK when finished.
3. Right-click on the song you just modified, and choose the "Convert to AAC" option. If you don’t see this in the context menu navigate to "Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Importing", and make sure the AAC Encoder is selected in the Import Using menu.
4. Once the song has finished being converted to the new format it will appear in your music list, and the "Time" should reflect the correct duration of the ringtone (which should be less than 30-seconds). Now navigate to your iTunes music folder to find the converted song. Here’s an example of where my Green Day ringtone was located.
5. Make sure you’re able to see the file’s extension (.M4A) like in the screenshot above. If you don’t see the extension go to Tools -> Folder Options -> View (Organize -> Folder and Search Options on Vista), and uncheck the Hide extensions for known file types box. Then click OK.
6. Copy the music file (with the .M4A extension) to your desktop. Once you’ve done that rename the file’s extension to .M4R which will make iTunes recognize it as a ringtone. Make sure there are no symbols (underscores, hyphens, etc…) in the file name.
7. In iTunes go to File -> Add File to Library, and then browse for the file from step 6. Once you’ve selected it press the Open button. iTunes will place the ringtone in the respective section in your library.
8. Sync your iPhone with iTunes and your newly created ringtone should get transferred over. If it doesn’t be sure to check the Ringtones tab in the iPhone configuration section of iTunes to verify that it is setup to sync your ringtones.
The iTunes way may be a little difficult for some of you. However you can also accomplish this with iPhone Ringtone Maker software which provides a way to convert all your personal songs and audio tracks extracted from video files to iPhone Ringtones. But will cost you $14.95 (with 14.95 you can only purchase and make 8 ringtones using iTunes).
iPhone Tips and Tricks #33 - Keyboard Speedups
Don’t bother using the Shift key to capitalize a new sentence. The iPhone does that capitalizing automatically.
Don’t put apostrophes in contractions, either; the iPhone will put those in for you, too.
iPhone Tips and Tricks #34 - Keyboard Shortcuts #1
When typing on your iPhone’s keypad, if you make a mistake, and your iPhone offers up the correct word underneath your misspelling, click the SPACE bar to accept the suggestion. (To ignore the suggestion, just keep typing.)
iPhone Tips and Tricks #35 - Keyboard Shortcuts #2
If you want to add a word to the iPhone’s custom dictionary, type it. You should consider adding your name, your friends’ names, your company name, street name, and similar words.
iPhone Tips and Tricks #36 - Keyboard Shortcuts #3
If you realize you’ve made a typing error a few sentences back, tap your finger where the mistake was made to position the cursor there. You can then correct the error, and use the same technique to return to your previous position in the text.
iPhone Tips and Tricks #37 - Keyboard Shortcuts #4
Double-tab the SPACE bar to add a period followed by a space.
iPhone Tips and Tricks #38 - Keyboard Shortcuts #5
Double-tap a picture, map, or web page to zoom in on it.
iPhone Tips and Tricks #39 - Keyboard Shortcuts #6
In Safari, after scrolling to the bottom of the page, tap the top of the screen to immediately return to the top of the page.
iPhone Tips and Tricks #40 - Keyboard Shortcuts #7
Visit http://tv.yahoo.com/listings, click the + button, and click Add to Home Screen. You now have one-click access to your local TV listing. Okay, so I’m a TV junkie.
