This iPhone tip was inspired by a similar one discovered by iPhone J.D. on how to use special glyph characters in iPhone folder names. Our tip takes it one step further, adding the cartoonish emoji to add a little color and graphics to your folder names. Combining emoji with words makes for a neat label, or you could just use the emoji alone. They also look sharp and detailed on the iPhone 4′s Retina Display screen.

To use emoji to label your folders, you must first have emoji (which are Japanese emoticons designed for cell phones) activated. See the next section for instructions on how to do this. Once activated, simple tap the globe icon on your keyboard until you see the emoji keyboard, and start labeling!

How to Enable Emoji

1. Down the free app Emoji Free! (link):

2. Open it, and tap the prompt “Ok, let’s do this”:

3. Open iPhone Settings:

4. Tap General:

5. Scroll down and tap Keyboard:

6. Tap International Keyboards:

6. Scroll down and tap Japanese:

7. Swipe the Emoji tab to on (Note: According to some users, Emoji may not be under Japanese, it could be under its own name):

8. Reboot your iPhone.

Now, whenever using the iPhone keyboard, tap the globe icon at the bottom to cycle through your different-language keyboards until the emoji appear. Don’t forget that you can left-swipe to the right to make more emoji appear.

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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.

If you’ve just bought an iPhone and are dreading manually re-entering in all your contacts, there’s a relatively quick and painless way to transfer them into the iPhone using your old SIM card. Below are instructions on how to do this.

An important thing to note is that only the first phone number for each contact from the old SIM will be transferred to the iPhone. Any secondary numbers will not transfer (eg, cell, work, etc). Also note that some phones, such as Blackberry devices, don’t store contact info on a SIM card. In that case, you’ll need to take your phone to an AT&T Wireless store to transfer the contacts.

How to Transfer Contacts from an Old SIM Card:

1. Shut down the iPhone by holding down the sleep button, then swiping the “Slide to Power Off” prompt:

2. Remove the SIM card that comes with your new iPhone and place the old SIM card from your previous phone into the iPhone. You can remove the iPhone’s SIM tray like this:

3. Go to Settings:

4. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars:

5. Scroll down a bit, then tap Import SIM Contacts:

6. Wait for the iPhone to finish importing, then turn off your iPhone again:

7. Take out the old SIM card, and put back in the new SIM card.

8. Start up your iPhone again by pressing the sleep button

Congratulations! The contacts from your old SIM should all be tucked away in your Address Book. The next time you sync with iTunes, they will backed up onto your computer as well.

Troubleshooting & Notes:

• The iPhone can only accept contacts that use A-Z and 0-9 in their name, so you may have to go through your old phone, and edit all your contacts to stick to this naming convention.
• If the transfer didn’t work, your old phone may not have stored your contacts on its SIM card, but rather kept them locally. To remedy, check if there’s an option on the old handset to move all the contacts to a SIM card. Do so and follow the steps above.
• Still not working? Sometimes, old SIM cards don’t work in the iPhone. Try this. Put your iPhone’s new SIM card in the old phone, then copy that phone’s contacts on the iPhone sim card. Again, this only works if your old phone can store contacts locally.
• Still not working? Some phones may be able to sync their contacts with your computer, for example, to the Address Book on a Mac or Outlook on a PC. Both of those programs can be used to sync the contacts to the iPhone. Also on a Mac, you can try the iSync application if your old phone uses bluetooth or USB.
• Finally, if none of these work, try taking your phones in to AT&T (or whoever your local provider is), as they may have devices to transfer all the information.

AT&T and Apple limit the size of downloads over the 3G/EDGE networks to files less than 10MB. This can prevent you from downloading many podcasts directly to the iPhone. However, there is a workaround to play any podcast listed in the iPhone’s iTunes app regardless of size. But the way to do it is not very obvious. Here’s how:

How to Play Any Podcast on the iPhone over 3G/EDGE:

1. Launch the iTunes app:

2. Tap the Podcasts button at the bottom of the screen (it may not be there by default). If you don’t see one, tap the More tab:

3. Tap Podcasts:

Tip: For quicker access to podcasts in the future, click the Edit button in the top right corner and drag the Podcasts icon to the row at the bottom.

4. Browse through the podcasts and select one. You will see a list of episodes:

5. To stream and listen to the entire podcast, tap the name of the podcast. DO NOT tap the button on the right side:

6. The iPhone’s Quicktime player will launch, and the podcast will be begin to stream (and play):

If you have a poor connection, you may want to pause the podcast and wait for more of the file to buffer so you can listen uninterrupted. Note that this works for video podcasts as well.

Be sure to check out more of our Art of the iPhone tips.

Many people dislike the font used in the iPhone’s Note app so much (the font is called Marker Felt), they refuse to use it. Until Apple gives us an official way to change it, we must rely on workarounds. Here are two ways to change the font in the Notes app without any hacking. The first method limits you to one font, Verdana. The second method takes more time but offers many more fonts to choose from.

The Chinese Keyboard Method

1.Tap the iPhone’s Setting’s icon:

2. Tap General
3. Scroll down and tap Keyboard
4. Tap International Keyboards
5. Scroll down all the way to the bottom and tap Chinese (Simplified):

6. Switch the tab labeled Pinyin to On:

You’ll only have to do steps 1-6 once. Steps 8 and 9 will have to be repeated every time you want to change the font.

7. Open the Notes app.
8. Create a new note, and when the keyboard pops up, hit the little globe icon until you see the Chinese keyboard. Most of the keys will be the same as the English version, but the space bar and return button will have Chinese characters on it:

9. Type one letter, then switch back to the English keyboard.

Now, when you continuing typing, the note will be in Verdana font.

The Computer to iPhone Method (Mac Only)

This method is for Mac users only, as it involves creating notes in the Mac Mail application. With this method, you can use dozens of fonts.

1. In the Mail program on your Mac, create a new Note:

2. Change the font style to whatever desired font style you want on the iPhone and type a letter or two in that font:

3. Click Done.
4. Connect your iPhone to the computer.
5. In iTunes, select your iPhone in the left sidebar.
6. Under the Info tab, scroll down and make sure the checkbox for “Sync notes” is checked:

7. Hit Apply or Sync
8. On the iPhone, open the Notes app.
9. Find the note you just created on the Mac, open it, and start typing. You’ll see the text is in the same the font you used on the Mac.

You can also use this method to change the font color and size:

Note that the font change will only work in the note that you created in the Mac’s Mail application. If you try to copy and paste the text into a new note, it will revert back to Marker Felt. Now, create a 100 notes with a single character typed in Helvetica, and you’ll never have to use Marker Felt again!

Be sure to check out more of our iPhone Tips.

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.

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

Search is missing in the iPhone’s Mail app, but you can access Gmail’s search feature on the iPhone using the Mobile Safari browser. Simply launch Gmail.com in the iPhone’s browser, then scroll to the very bottom of the webapp until you see the search bar. You can then use all the power of Google search to find specific emails.

Gmail iPhone webapp search.

It took me a while to discover the search bar, as it’s not in a very intuitive position–it’s normally at the top of Gmail in a regular browser.

Of course, the Gmail webapp requires an Internet connection while the iPhone’s Mail app can download email to be read offline. But recent changes to HTML could soon mean that emails can, in fact, be downloaded in a browser and read offline. But until then, we’ll have to suffer with Mail and use Gmail’s web interface for searching.

What’s taking so long is that all the data on iPhone is being backed up by iTunes. There’s a simple temporary fix, and it involves canceling the backup process. Just follow this simple step:

When synching the iPhone, you should see a progress message at the top of iTunes that reads “Backing up [Your Name]‘s iPhone.” Simply click the X next to this text.

This will cancel the backup process, but synching will continue. Synching is much quicker than the backup process, even with large files. You should be finished and on your way in anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes. You can watch the progress bar at the top of iTunes to gauge the time.

It’s important to note that you shouldn’t cancel backups too often, as having a backup of your iPhone is important in case the data on your iPhone somehow becomes corrupted. If you didn’t have a backup, you wouldn’t be able to fully restore the information on your iPhone.

Check out more of our posts on iPhone Tips.

If you want to activate a used iPhone, you have a few options. The first option is the easiest: take it to an AT&T Wireless store and set up a new account. A second option is to jailbreak the iPhone and use it as an iPod touch without phone service. A third option is to jailbreak and unlock the iPhone for use on another carrier like T-Mobile.

Take the iPhone to AT&T Wireless

If a friend or loved one gives you their old iPhone, you can make it your own by taking it to an AT&T store and telling them you have an old iPhone and would like to use it as your own. You’ll have to sign up for AT&T service, and they’ll give you a new sim card. Once you install the SIM card, you can activate the iPhone at home using iTunes. This is by far the easiest way to activate and reuse an old iPhone.

Can I Use a Carrier Other Than AT&T?

The iPhone works best with AT&T, but it is possible to unlock the iPhone so that it works with other carriers (note that the iPhone only works on GSM networks like AT&T and T-Mobile, it does not work on Verizon or Spring, which are CDMA networks). We don’t recommend unlocking, but if you want to do it, it is not illegal. An unlocked iPhone can be a hassle, however. For example, you won’t be able to take advantage of Apple’s iPhone software updates until the people who created the unlocking software tell you it’s ok to update.

If you want to unlock your iPhone, this site is a good starting place.

Someone Wants to Give Me Their Old iPhone. What Do I Need to Do?

If a friend or family member wants to give you their old iPhone, and you want to use it as a phone, ask them to erase all content on the iPhone before giving it to you. This is done on the iPhone by going into Settings >>> Reset >>> Erase All Content and Settings >>> Erase iPhone. Note that this erasing process can take up to two hours.

If you want to use the iPhone just as an iPod touch without phone service, read the section immediately below.

Can I Use the iPhone Without Having Phone Service? Like an iPod Touch?

Yes, and it will work with iTunes too, allowing you to buy and synch music and apps from the App Store. But, you should ask the person who’s giving you the used iPhone to keep the original SIM card inside the iPhone. Your friend will have to tell AT&T to disable their old SIM card and get a new one. The reason you should keep the old SIM card inside the iPhone is so that you can take advantage of new software upgrades and restore your iPhone.

Your friend should also restore the iPhone before giving it to you so all his data is erased. Just make sure the iPhone is activated (you can open apps, etc) when it is given to you.

What If There Is No Sim Card Inside the Used iPhone?

As long as the previous owner hasn’t left the iPhone in a restored, unactivated state, you can still use all the iPhone’s features (including synching with iTunes) except for the phone functions.

Without the original SIM card, you won’t be able to install software updates from Apple or restore the iPhone until you get a new SIM card.

If you restore or install one of Apple’s upgrades without a SIM card, the iPhone will stop working. It won’t work again until you activate it with a new SIM card or jailbreak it.

In other words, do not restore or attempt to upgrade the iPhone unless you have the original SIM card inside.

I Have an Unactivated Used iPhone Without a SIM Card. How Do I Activate It?

Your only option is to jailbreak it. The term jailbreaking essentially means hacking the iPhone so that you can do whatever you want with it, including installing applications that are not approved by Apple and then unlocking it for use on other carriers.

How Do I Jailbreak and/or Unlock My iPhone?

To jailbreak and unlock your iPhone, you’ll need to download some free software. The jailbreak software you’ll need depends on the software version of your iPhone. Your best bet to find the latest jailbreak and unlocking software is to Google the terms Jailbreak and whatever version of the iPhone software is on the phone (for example, Jailbreak and iPhone 3.1.3). Note that oftentimes, it takes a while for the people behind the jailbreak software to figure out how to do it, so it may not be available yet. It can even be different groups of people who create the software. Some advice: do not ever pay for jailbreaking and unlocking software. It’s always eventually offered for free.

One recent version of the iPhone software to be jailbroken is iPhone 3.1.3. To jailbreak and unlock iPhone 3.1.3, you’re going to need the Sn0wbreeze 3.1.3 jailbreak software for Windows, found here, or for Macs the Pwnage Tool 3.1.5 (link, instructions).

One of the missing features of the iPhone’s Mail app is the ability to create a group of email contacts and send an email to that group. For example, let’s say you’re at the hospital, your wife just had a baby, and you want to send an email to a large group announcing “It’s a boy!” You’d have to enter each contact in one by one—a tedious process.

There is a somewhat imperfect workaround that involves a little preparation. The answer lies in creating a draft email. Here’s how:

Emailing Large Groups With the iPhone

1. Open the Mail App.

2. Tap the compose email button at the bottom:

3. Add contacts in the To: field by either tapping the plus sign or simply typing the first few letters of the addresses.

4. If you want, add a subject line and text in the body.

5. Tap the Cancel button in the top left corner.

6. Tap Save:

You have just saved a draft version of that email in the Drafts folder. You can check it out by tapping your email address button in the top left, then tapping the Drafts tab.

When it’s time to send it, simply navigate to the same Drafts folder, select the email, enter in any new information, and hit Send.

How to Send Subsequent Updates to the Same Group

1. Tap the Sent folder (it’s directly underneath the Drafts folder)

2. Tap the email you sent to the group.

3. Tap the arrow icon on the bottom right:

4. Tap Reply All.

You’ll notice that the group of contacts will now appear in the CC: field, and your own address will appear in the To: field. That’s ok, the new email will still be sent to everyone, and you’ll get a copy sent to yourself as well.

It’s recommended you change the subject line, as the text Re: is automatically added, making it appears as if it’s a reply. That might be confusing.

What About Pictures?

Unfortunately, if you snapped a picture with your iPhone, you can’t attach it to the draft email. With the iPhone, photos are attached only by going into the Photo app first, choosing to email the picture, and starting out with a fresh email.

One possible workaround is to upload the picture to Flickr, and then point people to your Flickr account in the email. There are two ways to upload photos to Flickr: email and apps. Here are instructions on emailing iPhone photos to Flickr. There are also apps that let you upload to Flickr form your iPhone: Mobile Fotos ($2.99 , App Store), Darkslide Premium ($3.99, App Store), and Reflections ($3.99, App Store).

Check out all of our posts on iPhone Tips.