1. Tap Settings:

2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars:

4. Choose Last, First or First, Last:

And that’s it. You may notice another option labeled Display Order. This determines how the iPhone’s contacts are displayed, but not sorted. For example, if the display order was First, Last, then a name would be displayed Anne Hathaway. If Last, First, then Hathaway, Anne.

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If you’re looking for a little more precision in just how much juice is left in your iPhone battery, the iPhone has a way to display battery life as a percentage next to the battery icon. To turn on this feature, follow these instructions. Note that this works for the iPhone 3GS only.

1. Tap Settings:

2. Tap General:

3. Tap Usage:

4. Slide the Battery Percentage tab to On:

Be sure to check out more of our iPhone Basics and iPhone Tips.

If you’re looking for a free instruction manual that covers all the basics of operating the iPhone, check out Apple’s iPhone User’s Guide. It’s free, and at 130 pages long, it thoroughly covers all basics of operating your iPhone. It’s available as a PDF that you can download from Apple’s site.

The guide may be too large to print out and carry with you, but you can also access the entire guide in your iPhone’s browser. Apple has created a special web version (a webapp) with an iPhone-friendly interface. Check it out here: iPhone User Guide webapp, on your iPhone.

The webapp has a handy search feature to help you quickly find the topic you’re looking for. Or, you can just browse the regular menu to discover new things your iPhone does.

For easy access to the guide, bookmark it to your homescreen. It even has its own special icon. To bookmark, tap the icon that looks like a book at the bottom of the screen, then tap Add to Home Screen.

Links:

iPhone User’s Guide (pdf)

iPhone User’s Guide (webapp)

To set the iPhone’s restrictions, just follow these steps:

1. Open Settings on your home screen.

2. Tap General:

3. Tap Restrictions:

4. Tap Enable Restrictions:

5. You’ll be asked to enter a four digit PIN, which prevents another person from changing the restrictions:

6. Enter the same PIN again to confirm:

7. Two sets of restrictions will appear. The first set allows you to restrict the functionality of a specific app: Safari, YouTube, iTunes, Installing Apps, Camera, and Location. Simply slide the tab to turn off any of these apps. Once you do, the iPhone user won’t be able to use that service.

The second set of restrictions controls what type of content can be accessed on your iPhone. You can control what maturity level for apps, songs, music, movies, etc, can play on the iPhone. iTunes and the App Store require all entries to be rated, for music with explicit content, and all videos and apps on levels similar to what you see at the moves (G, PG, R, etc.)

You can also turn off something called In-App Purchases. What are In-App Purchases? Well, some apps allow you to purchase additional content like new levels or eBooks within the app itself. To prevent being hit by unwanted charges, you can restrict the iPhone’s ability to make in-app purchases.

8. To finish, simply return to the iPhone’s homescreen by pressing the home button.

How to Disable Restrictions

To disable the restrictions, just tap Disable Restrictions and reenter the PIN:

Be sure to check out more of our posts on iPhone Basics.

Setting up your primary email account on the iPhone will make your life that much easier rather than trying to check it on the Web. Trust us. Not only will you not have to launch Safari to check your email, but automatic notifications will keep you up-to-date at all times. Setting up an email account on the iPhone is incredibly easy. Just follow these steps:

1. Open the Mail app.

2. Tap the email provider you wish to use. If you want to set up an email account that is not with Microsoft Exchange, MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo or AOL, tap ‘other.’ I set up a Hotmail account on my iPhone, which is considered an ‘other’ account.

3. Enter your name, email address, password, and description of your email account. When you’re finished, tap ’save.’

4. After you tap ’save,’ your emails will start importing into the Mail app, and your inbox will be the primary display when you open the application.

For POP/IMAP Email Accounts:

Things get a little more complicated if you’re setting up a POP or IMAP email account. For these types of accounts, you need to know your incoming and outgoing mail server details, including your host name. For some POP/IMAP accounts, the Mail app can discover the info automatically after you enter your username and password, but it’s not guaranteed. If the application prompts you to enter your incoming or outgoing mail server details, this means that the app couldn’t find it automatically.

In this scenario, the best place to get this information is from your email provider. Many email providers list these details under their help or settings sections.

More iPhone Email Basics and Hints:

• To check for new email messages, tap the refresh icon in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. To compose a new message on your iPhone, tap the compose icon on the right-hand side.

• To delete or move multiple emails, tap the edit icon in the top right-hand corner of your inbox.

• To change any of your mailbox settings, go to your iPhone’s main settings tab.

And then tap ‘Mail, Contacts, Calendars.’

• It’s always a good idea to enable SSL (Secure Sockets Layers) on your iPhone mail accounts to increase your account’s security. To enable SLL, go back into ‘Mail, Contacts, Calendars’ in your main iPhone settings and tap ‘advanced.’

Next, make sure that the display next to ‘Use SSL’ says ‘on.’

The iPhone’s bright and detailed screen is perfect for watching movies and TV shows while on the go. Videos purchased in iTunes are relatively easy to transfer to the iPhone. Videos from other, non-iTunes sources are a different matter (see the Notes section at the end of this post). The following are instructions on how to transfer movies and TV shows purchased from iTunes onto the iPhone.

How to Sync iTunes Movies and TV Shows to the iPhone

1. Connect your iPhone to the computer.

2. In iTunes, click on your iPhone in the left sidebar.

3. Click on the Movies or TV Shows tab at the top:

4. Click the checkbox in the top left corner that says Synch Movies or Sync TV Shows so that there’s a checkmark in the box:

5. Here’s where Apple makes things a little complicated. Immediately below the Synch Movies and Synch TV Shows boxes, you’ll see the following:

I do not recommend you check these boxes. The boxes tell iTunes to automatically sync videos that you haven’t watched yet or are the three most recent episodes, etc. While in theory this sounds nice, in practice it can be confusing and buggy.

6. Click the checkboxes next to the individual movies and TV show episodes you want on your iPhone:

For movies:

For tv shows:

7. Click Apply or Sync in the bottom right:

That’s it. You’ve transferred your video files onto the iPhone.

Notes:

• You can save yourself the trouble of having to sync videos by purchasing and downloading movies and TV shows directly on the iPhone using the iTunes app. However, downloading only works over WiFi (no 3G/EDGE).
• Music Videos you purchased in iTunes are found in under your iPhone’s Music tab in iTunes.
• Movies from non-iTunes sources (bittorrent, movie rips, etc) must be converted into an iPhone-compatible format. The easiest solution is to use software like Videora that have iPhone presets. Load the file then click the iPhone preset. Once it’s converted, drag and drop the file into iTunes and follow the above instructions.
• The video formats supported by the iPhone are: H.264 (baseline profile level 3.0) and MPEG-4 (simple profile).

Be sure to check out more of our posts on iPhone Basics.

1. Open Settings:

2. Tap General:

3. Scroll down to the bottom and tap Reset:

4. Tap Reset Keyboard Dictionary:

And that’s it, you’ve reset the iPhone’s dictionary.

Notes:

• The iPhone doesn’t always add a rejected word to the dictionary every time you tap the “x”. However, the more you reject the autocorrection spelling, the more likely it will be added.
• Unfortunately, there is no way to remove individual words.
• You can turn off autocorrect if you like in the iPhone Settings menu (Settings->General->Keyboard). This can help prevent the accidental addition of misspelled words.
• The iPhone’s dictionary automatically adds your contact’s names to its word list. So if you can’t remember how to spell someone’s last name, give it a shot anyway, autocorrection may show you the correct spelling.

If you’re new to the iPhone, be sure to check our more of our posts on iPhone Basics.

It is possible to send multiple photos in an email on the iPhone, but you need to start in the iPhone’s Photo app, not the Mail app like you’d assume. Below are step-by-step instructions for attaching multiple photos to an email.

1. Launch the Photo App:

2. Tap the album where the photos are located:

3. You’ll see a bunch of thumbnails of the pictures in the album. Tap the Share button in the bottom left corner:

4. Tap the pictures you want to share in the email (you can tap more than one). A red check mark will appear on each photo to indicate you’ve selected it:

5. Tape Share in the bottom left.

6. Tap Email:

7. A new email will pop up with your photos inserted into the email:

Choose your recipients, write a subject and message, and hit Send.

Notes and Tips:

In Step 5, you’ll also notice a button that says Copy. Selecting Copy will also let you share multiple photos in an email–it just takes a few more steps than using the Share button (with Copy, you’ll have to open the Mail app yourself and then paste the photos).

Using the Copy button does have one big advantage: it allows you to send full-resolution pictures. You may not know that the iPhone automatically shrinks your pictures taken with the iPhone’s camera from 2048 x 1536 to 800 x 600 in size when you send them in an email via Share. Use Copy and Paste to get the full resolution.

The main downside to using Copy to share photos is that the email will take much longer to send over 3G/EDGE because of the larger file sizes.

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Em Dash–

To make an em dash—often used to interrupt a sentence for parenthetical remarks like this one—hold down the hyphen key until you see an em dash appear next to the hyphen. Slide your finger over to highlight the em dash and release your finger.

Ellipsis…

To make an ellipsis, hold down the period key until the ellipsis appears next to the period. Slide your finger to highlight and release.

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Call Commands

Corrections

Apple describes these commands as used to “make a correction.” However, I’ve only found them to be able to cancel Voice Control after a secondary prompt, such as when it asks, “Home or Mobile?”

iPod Controls

Cancel Voice Control

Cancels (closes) Voice Control.

Other Info

To activate Voice Control, you can either hold down the iPhone home button or hold down the button on the iPhone headphones. For the best results, speak clearly with a slight pause between each command and use full names for contacts.

The default language for Voice Control is the same as in the iPhone general settings (General –> International –> Language Setting). If you would like to command Voice Control in a different language and impress your friends, you can change it in Settings –> General –> International –> Voice Control.

Voice Control works even when the iPhone is passcode locked. To change this, go to Settings and navigate to General –> Passcode Lock and turn Voice Dial off.

You can say “eight hundred” for phone numbers that contain “800.” This only works with the number 800, a common toll-free number. For all other phone numbers, you’ll have to speak each digit, as in “seven zero zero” for 700.

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