Sending a cell phone text message to more than one person can often save you a lot of typing. The iPhone has the ability to do this, although figuring out how is not very intuitive. Just follow these simple instructions:
1. Open the SMS app:
If you like to listen to the iPhone as you go to sleep, there is a sleep timer function that can automatically stop playing music or video after a set amount of time. The function is sort of hidden within the iPhone’s Clock app.
1. Open the Clock app.
*Updated 8/4/09 for iPhone 3.0 Changes*
One of the lesser known features of the iPhone is the ability to rent and movies in iTunes or even on the iPhone itself, then watch those movies on the iPhone. Air travelers especially will find this feature useful, as it means they can rent and carry a movie wherever they go without those bulky mobile DVD players.
Renting a movie in iTunes costs $2.99 for a standard “classic” rental and $3.99 for new releases, with $0.99 weekly specials available.
Renting a movie directly onto the iPhone requires the Iphone be connected to a WiFi network. This is because Apple and AT&T do not allow files bigger than 10MB to be downloaded over 3G/EDGE.
1. To find a movie or TV to rent, open the iTunes app and click on the videos tab at the bottom:
2. Browse or search through the selections. Tap one to select it, then tap Rent:
3. The button will turn green. Tap it again to confirm, then enter your iTunes store password to confirm the purchase.
Once it finished download, launch the iPod app on the iPhone. You’ll find the movies under the Videos tab.
1. In iTunes, select iTunes Store in the left sidebar:
You can add prefixes (Dr, Mr, Mrs, Ms), suffixes (Jr, III), middle names, and other information to any iPhone contact. To do this, there’s a special option called Add Field. The option can be hard to find though. Here are instructions on how to find it and how to add prefixes, etc, to contacts:
1. Open the Contacts or Phone app:
You can personalize your iPhone by adding your own wallpaper. The wallpaper appears when you bring the iPhone out of sleep mode. Here’s how to change your iPhone wallpaper:
1. Tap Settings on the iPhone’s home screen:
We’ve all been in this situation: the iPhone rings, but you can’t take the call. If you want to immediately silence the call (turn off the ringtone and vibration), press the sleep button once.
If you want to send the call directly to voicemail, press the sleep button again. So in other words, to send a call to voicemail after it rings, press the sleep button twice. The sleep button is located on the top of your iPhone on the righthand side.
If you’re using the iPhone headphones, press the headphone button once to answer the call. Press it twice to send it to voicemail.
Check out all of our posts on iPhone Basics.
By assigning a special ringtone to a contact, you can tell who’s calling without even taking the iPhone out of your pocket. Follow these instructions to assign a ringtone to an iPhone contact:
The iPhone’s default ringtone is pleasant enough, but you’re not stuck with it. You can change it to 24 other ringtones the iPhone comes with (or you can create your own from an mp3. Here’s our instructions for how to do that). Here’s how to change your iPhone ringtone:
1. Tap the iPhone Settings button on your home screen:
Heat can degrade the iPhone’s lithium ion battery much more quickly than normal usage, meaning you’ll get less power from the battery as it ages. Avoid leaving your iPhone in hot cars or laying in sunlight. Specifically, avoid exposing the iPhone to temperatures above 114 degrees farenheit.
Apple is constantly fixing bugs and finding new ways to conserve battery life. Keeping your iPhone software up-to-date will not only improve battery performance, your iPhone will work better in general.
Searching for Wi-Fi networks can cause the iPhone to lose power. Turn off it off if you rarely use a Wi-Fi network.
The Wi-Fi radio uses less power to connect to the Internet than 3G or EDGE radios. If you have a choice, go with Wi-Fi to conserve power.
The iPhone can check your email automatically at set intervals. To conserve power, set the intervals further apart (eg, hourly instead of every 15 minutes) or set it to Manual so that it won’t check email until you open the Mail app and tap on your email account.
GPS is one of the biggest battery hogs on the iPhone. Minimize its usage. You can even turn it off entirely in the settings menu under the General tab (it’s called Location Services in the settings).
The 3G radio consumes more power than the EDGE and Wi-Fi radios. If you don’t use 3G (eg, you don’t browse the Internet much, or you spend a lot of time around a Wi-Fi network), you can turn it off in the iPhone settings. Don’t worry, you’ll still receive phone calls.
The more email accounts, the more power needed to check each one. Set the iPhone to check less important accounts at longer intervals, manually, or even delete them from the iPhone if you don’t need them.
Push email services like Yahoo, Microsoft Exchange, and Google
can drain your battery quicker than using the regular fetch (POP3) email. Turning off push in the iPhone’s settings will not prevent you from receiving email, as the iPhone will default to the fetch email settings.
Turn off Bluetooth to prevent your iPhone from searching for Bluetooth devices.
The brighter the screen, the more power used. You can lower the iPhone’s screen brightness in the Settings menu.
No, this has nothing to do with the airlines’ request to turn off cell phones before takeoff. While traveling, you may pass through areas with low or no cell service. The iPhone will use more power searching for a signal in these areas. You can turn on Airplane Mode in the iPhone’s settings.
Some games and other third-party apps are cpu intensive, and thus use up the iPhone’s battery quicker. Be aware that using these apps over long periods will wear down the battery much quicker than functions like playing a song.
Check out more of our iPhone Tips.
It happens to all of us, you “accidentally” browse to an unsavory website on your iPhone’s browser. Now you want to delete all traces of having visited that site from the browser’s history. How do you do it? Follow these simple instructions:
1. Tap the Mobile Safari icon:
2. Tap the Bookmark icon at the bottom of the screen.
3. Tap the Clear button at the bottom left of the screen:
4. Tap Clear History:
You have now deleted your history of visited sites. Also note that you have deleted your history of Google searches on the iPhone. Yes, it also keeps a history of search terms too. It does this for the same reason it keeps visited URLs: to save you time.
Both URLs and Google search terms will appear in dropdown lists so that you don’t have to re-type web addresses or Google searches you’ve made in the past. It’s actually a nice time saver if you aren’t embarrassed about the websites you’ve visited or your searches.
But following the above instructions will delete both types of browsing history, so my, I mean, your habit of visiting AnneHathawayPictures.com need not be revealed.
Note: You may still continue to see some URLs and other terms in that dropdown list. These are either default bookmarks from Apple or bookmarks you have made, they are not a part of your browser’s history.
What about the Clear History option in the iPhone Settings? What does that do?
Yes, there is an alternative method of deleting Mobile Safari’s history in the iPhone ‘s Settings menu (see picture below). However, it’s not as effective, as it doesn’t also clear your Google searches. For example, if you searched for Anne Hathaway Pictures in Google, the next time someone entered the letter A in the Google search bar, your search keywords for the sexy young starlet would show up in a dropdown list. Busted!
What about Clear Cache and Clear History in the Settings menu? What do those do?
You can clear two other types of data in the iPhone Settings menu: cache and cookies. It sounds like a snack, but really the cache and cookies are data your browser keeps to make your web browsing experience more fluid.
A cache is saved data from websites (eg, buttons, icons, banners, etc) that helps websites load quicker. Clearing your cache is way to clear some of your iPhone’s memory and may improve speed performance.
Cookies hold your online “personality” so websites can know something about you when you visit. An example of this is visiting Amazon.com and seeing that annoying “Hello, John Smith!” at the top. Clear your cookies to avoid such irritation.