Recents

Tapping the recent icon displays the iPhone call log. The Recents feature houses logs of all the, well, recent calls or received, as well as calls you missed. Here's a tricks concept: Tap All to show all the recent calls and Missed to show just those missed. Under the All list, completed calls and missed call that have been returned by clicking the red entry are shown in black and missed calls that haven't been returned in this fashion are in red, along with a descriptor of the phone you were calling or received a call from (home, mobile, and so on).

By tapping the small blue circle with the right-pointing arrow next to an item in the list, you can find out the time the call was made or missed, as well as any known info about the caller from your Contacts information.

To return a call, just tap anywhere on the name.

If one of the call you missed came from someone who isn't already in your COntacts, you can add him or her. Tap the right-pointing arrow, and then tap the Create New Contact button. If the person is among your Contacts but has a new number, tap the Add to Existing Contact button. When the list gets too long, tap Clear to clean it up.

Favorites

Consider Favorites the iPhone equivalent of speed-dialing. It's where you can keep a list of the people and numbers you dial most often. Merely tap the person's name in favorites, and your iPhone calls the person.

You can set up as many favorites as you need for a person. So, for example, you may create separate Favorites listings for your spouse's office phone number and cell number.

Setting up Favorites is a breeze. When looking at one of your contacts, you may have noticed the add to favorites button. When you tap this button, all the phone numbers you have fot that person pop up. Tap the number you want to make into a favorite and it turns up on the list.

You can rearrange the order in which your favorites are displayed. Tap Edit, and then, to the right of the person you want to move, press your finger against the symbol that looks like three short horizontal lines stacked on top of one another. Drag the symbol to the place on the list where you want your favorite contaxt to appear.

You can designate new favorites from the Favotites application by tapping the + symbol at the upper-right corner of the screen. Doing so brings you back to Contacts. From there, choose the appropriate person and number. A star appears next to any contact's number chosen as a favorite.

If any of your chosen folks happen to fall out of favor, you can easily kick them off the favorites roster. Here's how:

1. Tap the Edit button in the upper-left corner of the screen.
You will notice that a red circle with a horizontal white line appears to the left of each name in the list.

2. Tap the circle next to hte A-lister getting the heave-ho
The horizontal white line is now vertical and a red Delete button appears to the right of the name, as shown in the figure.

3. Tap Delete
The person(or one of his or her given phone numbers) is no longer afforded the privilage of being in your iPhone inner circle.

Booting someone off the favorites list does not remove that person from the main contacts list.

The iPhone as an Internet Communication device

But wait - there's more! Not only is the iPhone a great phone and a stellar iPod, but it's also a full-featured Internet communications device with we're about to drop a bit of industry jargon on you - a rich HTML e-mail client that's compatible with most POP and IMAP mail services, with support for Microsoft Exchnage ActiveSync. Also on board is a world-class Web browser (Safari) that, unlike on other phones, makes web surfing fun and easy.

Another cool Internet feature is Maps, a killer mapping application based on Google Maps. By using GPS (3G or 3GS hardware) or triangulation (on hte original iPhone), it can determine your location, let you view maps and satellite imagery, and obtain driving directions and traffic information regardless of where in the United States you happen to be. You can also find businesses such as gas stations, pizza restaurants, hospitals, and Apple stores with just a few taps. And the Compass application (3GS only) not only displays your current GPS coordinates but also orients Maps to show the direction you're facing. Let's see your Nokia do theat!

You might also enjoy using stocks, a built-in-application that delivers near real time stock quotes and charts any time and any place, or Weather, another built-in app that obtains and displays the weather forecast for as many cities as you like.

The Internet experience on an iPhone is far superior to the Internet experience on any other handheld device.

The iPhone as an iPod

We agree with Steve Jobs on the one: The iPhone is a better iPod than almost any that Apple has ever made. (Okey, we can quibble about the iPod Touch or wanting more storage.) You can enjoy all your existing iPod content - music, audiobooks, audio and video podcasts, music videos, television shows, and movies - on the iPhone's gorgeous high-resolution color display, which is bigger, brighter, and richer than any iPod display that came before it.

Bottom line: If you can get the content - be it video, audio, or whatever - into iTunes on your Mac or PC, you can synchronize it and watch or listen to it on your iPhone.

The iPhone as a phone and digital camera/ camcoder

On the phone side, the iPhone synchronizes with the contacts and calenders on your Mac or PC, It includes a full-featured QWERTY soft, or virtual, keyboard, which makes typing text easier than ever before - for some folks.

Granted, the virtual keyboard takes a bit of time to get used to. But we think that many of you eventually will be whizzing along at a much faster pace than you thought possible on a mobile keyboard of this type.

The 2-megapixel(iPhone and iPhone 3G) or 3-megapixel (iPhone 3GS) digital camera is accompanied by a decent photo management application, so taking and managing digital photos (and videos on iPhone 3GS) is a pleasure rather than the nightmare it can be on other phones. Plus, you can automatically synchronize iPhone photos and videos with the digital photo library on your Mac or PC. Okey, we still wish the iPhone camera took better photos and shot better videos but it is still much better than most other phone cameras.

Finally, one of our favorite phone accoutrements is visual voicemail (Try saying that three times fast.) This feature lets you see a list of voicemail messages and choose which one to listen to or delete without being forced to deal with every message in your voice mailbox in sequential order. Now, that's handy!

How to know if you missed any calls

If you miss a call while your phone is asleep, you'll see the caller's name and missed call onscreen when you wake it(well, you'll see their name if they're in your Contacts list. If they're not , you'll just see their number and Missed Call). Also, when you wake it, you'll see the green phone icon now has a small red circle on its top-right corner with the number of calls you've missed, it's the calls you've missed combined with the number of unheard voicemail messages you've been left. So, if you missed five calls but those five caller all left messages, then you'll see the number 10, which represents those five missed calls and five voice messages, even though only five people actually called. I told you it was weird.

Check your Email while you're on the phone

If you're in a really boring phone conversation, and you want to do what everybody else in the business world does - check your email - it makes easier if you start by tapping the Speaker button (so you can still hear your conversation while you're looking at the touchscreen). Then, press the home button, and tap the mail icon. Don't worry - your call will stay live even though you're doing something completely different. To return to your call screen, just tap once at the very top of your screen (where it says touch to Return to Call), and it takes you back there. Note: Checking your email or surfing the web while on the phone is not supported over most EDGE networks.

Pausing the Music to take a call

If you've got your headset(earbuds) on and you're listening to music and a phone call comes in, you can pause the song and jump over to take the call all in one click (that's right - it's a click, not a tap). There's little button attached to the headset (about 5" form right earbud itself, it doesn't look like a button, it looks like a thin little plastic rectangle). Click the button, and the song playing is paused, and it answers your call. When you're done with the call, click the button again to hang up and pick up the song right where you left off.

Making Instant Conference Calls

To add another person to the call you're on (for a three-way-call), just tap the Add Call button on the touchscreen, and it brings up your all Contacts list. Tap the contact's name you want to added to your three-way call, then tap their number, and it dials them. Now tap the Merge Calls button to add them to your conversation. If the person you want added to your call isn't in your all Contacts list, then you can dial them by tapping on the keypad button in the bottom-right corner of the All Contacts screen.

iTip: Dialing an Extension

So let's say dial a number and you get one of those "If you know your party's extension, please dial it now" greetings. I know - how hard could it be? Actually, it's easy - if you know how. All you have to do is tap the Keypad button on your touchscreen, and then dial the extension. I know, it sounds really easy now, but I've seen people totally stumped when it happens to them.

Putting a call on hold to call someone else

If you're on a call and need to make another one, you can pit that call on hold and make a different call(kind of like having a two-line phone). Just tap the Hold button on the touchscreen, then tap the Add call button. This brings up your All Contacts list, and you can tap on a name to dial the contact, or you can just dial a number by tapping on the keypad button that appears in the bottom-right corner of the All Contacts screen. If you want to switch back to your original call, you can just tap the Swap button or tap the call at the top of the screen.

iTip: Muting a Phone Call

If you're on a call and don't what to caller to hear what you're saying for a moment, tap the Mute button on the touchscreen. When you're ready to start talking again, tap the Mute button again. if you have a call in progress and want to hear your conversation through the iPhone's speaker, tap the Speaker button on the touchscreen.

Saving a Dialed Number as a Contact

If you've just dialed a number using the keypad, and you want to add it as a contact (so you don't have to dial it again in the future), then once the full number appears at the top of the keypad screen(as seen here), tap the add contact button(which appears to the immediate left on the screen Call button). This brings up a menu where you choose to save this number as a new contact or add it to an existing contact.

Dialing using the standard keypad

If you want to dial a number, you just type in the number (like you would on any other phone) by tapping once on the phone icon on the Home Screen, then tapping on the keypad button to bring up the standard phone dialing buttons you seen above. To dial a number, just tap-the number keys. If you make a mistake, press the back button(the button to the right of the green call button) to erase that digit.

iTip: Redialing a Number

If you want to redial the last number you manually dialed, in the phone app, tap the keypad button and then tap call. This will display the last number you dialed manually and tapping Call again will actually dial it.

Importing Contacts from your Old Phone

What you have yo do is (you knew this was coming, right?) get the contacts on your old phone onto your computer. Then you can go back to the previous page and follow those instructions, On a Mac, there's a utility program called iSync that does the syncing from your phone to your computer for you, and it imports your contact info into Apple's own Address Book application (which syncs with your iPhone, no sweat). If your old phone isn't compatible with iSync or you're on a Windows PC, you can use a utility called The Missing Sync for iPhone 2.0 by Mark/ Space. Again, once you get your contacts on your computer, then follow the instructions on the previous page.

Importing Contacts from your computer

If you're Macintosh user, there are four contact manager applications that let you sync directly from your computer to your iPhone, and they are: (1) your mac's Address Book application. (2) Microsoft Entourage. (3) Yahoo! Address book, or (4) Google contacts.If your contacts are in any one of those four, when you plug your iPhone into your computer, it launches iTunes and syncs the contacts on your computer with your iPhone (if you have this preference set). Or, you can click on the info preferences tab in the main iTunes window, and choose which contacts to sync, If you're working on a corporate microsoft Exchange Server, see your IT department for the proper setting. If you have a MobileMe(.mac) account, you can set your iPhone to sync from within your computer's System Preferences.

if you're a Windows PC user, it works pretty much the same way, but the four contact managers it supports direct importing from are: (1) Yahoo! Address Book, (2) Windows Contacts (3) Microsoft Outlook, and (4) Google Contacts. Of course, if you're corporate user on a Microsoft Exchange server, you can get your contacts over the air, as well. Again, see your IT department for the settings. If you have a MobileMe account, you can change your setting from within your computer's MobileMe preferences, found in your Control Panel in the network preferences.

How to use the phone

I thought "phoneheads" was a great time for this post, but it's not the name of a song; it's the name of a band that plays electronic music, which is why you probably haven't heard of them. My guess is that you don't listen to much electronic music. I'm not talking about music made with electronics (like electric guitars or synths). I'm talking about the kind of music you hear your teenagers playing, and you shake your head in disgust telling them, "That's not music!" Then one day, when you hear Van Halen's "Jamie's Cryin" playing on your oldies station, you look in your rear view mirror and tell your kids, "Now that's music!" The sad thing is - you're right. That was music. And the stuff kids are listening to today is nothing more than an aural assault on everything we hold sacred about "real" music, which includes: white headbands, skinny ties, parachute pants, big hair, the hood of whitesnake's car, inexpensive gas, and cassette tapes. Now that was music. I'm pretty safe in saying all this because you bought an iPhone, which means you must be pretty well off (or just incredibly loss the money), because iPhone aren't cheap. That mean you are probebly in your late 30s or early 40s, and you think that electronic music isn't music, so when I wrote that earlier, you were nodding your head. But there is a second scenario: one in which you're young, and have rich parents, and they bought you an iPhone because they're loose with money. In that case, make sure you check out phonehead's track "Syrinx(TGM Mix)." I love that song!

When the iPhone Rings

When you get a call, your iPhone displays the number of the person who's calling(or it displays their name if they're already in your all contacts list). If your iPhone is sleeping(it's been in your pocket, or your purse, etc.), you can answer the call by dragging the green slide to Answer button to the right. To ignore the call (and have it go to your voicemail), just press the sleep/ Wake button to the right. To ignore the call (and have it go to your voicemail), just press the Sleep/ Wake button (once) at the top of the iPhone, which also silences the ring. If a call comes in while your iPhone is awake (for example, you're not on the phone, but you're using another part of the iPhone, like checking your email or checking out a website), then two buttons will appear at the bottom of the screen: To take the call, press the green Answer button. To refuse the call (and send it to your voicemail), press the red Decline button (doing this also immediately silences the ring).

iTip:swithcing to Silent Mode
If you want to switch your iPhone to silent mode, just move the Ring/ Silent switch (Found on the top-left side of your iPhone) to silent mode (move the switch toward the back of the iPhone - you'll see a large icon appear onscreen). Switch back to gegular Ring mode by moving the Ring/ Silent switch back towards the screen side of your iPhone.

Zooming in for a Better View

You can zoom your view in tighter on webpages, emails, photos, or in the Maps feature by either: (1) double-tapping on the area you want to zoom in to(let's say you're on a webpage and you want to zoom in to read an article. Just double-tap right on that area(it's like double-clicking with a mouse - just two quick taps), and it zooms in). Ir, the second method (2) is to "pinch out," which is where you pinch your index finger and thumb together (link you're pinching something), and then you touch the screen with these two fingers pinched together and quickly spread them out. As you spread out your fingers, the screen zooms in. To zoom back out, start with your fingers apart - touch the top of the screen with your index finger and the bottom with your thumb - and pinch inward until they touch (like you're trying to pinch the screen).

Charging your iPhone

Apple gives you two ways to charge your iPhone: (1) the AC power adapter (one end plugs into dock connector at the bottom of you iPhone via the Provided USB cable, and the other end plugs into a standard household outlet), or(2) your iPhone will charge any time it's connected to your computer with the USB cable(one end plugs into the dock connector, and the other end plugs into the USB port on your computer).(Note:There are other charging solutions, like car chargers, but you have to buy those separately.) There is also a charging dock available from the Apple Store, which is nice because it stands you iPhone upright while it's charging(so you don't have to just lay your iPhone on a table) and offers an audio out plug to connect your iPhone to speakers or a stereo receiver, but other than that, there's no advantage to using the Dock over just plugging your iPhone directly into your computer(Whether you use the Dock, the AC Power adapter, or the USB cable by itself, they all work the same way. The only difference is, if you use the Dock, you plug the USB cable into the dock connector in the Dock, rather than the iPhone itself).

iTip: Charging via Your Computer
While you can charge your iPhone directly from the USB port on your computer, the battery may drain, not charge, when the computer goes to sleep or is in hibernation mode. You also may not get enough power if you connect your iPhone to a USB hub - it's usually best to connect it directly to your computer's built-in USB port.

Getting Back to the Home Screen

There's only one "hard" button(an actual real button you can feel) on the face of the iPhone(it's found just below the touchscreen), and it's very important because with it you're only one click away from being back at the Home screen. Just press it, and the Home screen appears. You'll use the touchscreen controls for making calls, playing music, and pretty much everything else the iPhone does.

iTip: How to Force Quit an Application
If an Application on your iPhone seems to be frozen or not resopnding, try pressing-and-holding the Sleep/ Wake button for a few seconds until a red slider appears, then pressing-and-holding the Home button. This will force quit the current application and take you back to the Home screen.

Syncing your iPhone

"Syncing your iPhone" just means you're connecting your iPhone to your computer (your Mac or PC) and syncing the songs, videos, contacts, calendars, etc, between the two. This happens automatically when you connect your iPhone to your computer. When your computer detects your iPhone, it launches iTunes and starts syncing your content. However, you can set preferences for exactaly what gets uploaded to your iPhone and how. You do this in iTunes once your iPhone is connected to your computer. Simply click on your iPhone in the Divices list on the left side of the iTunes window and your iPhone preferences appear in the main iTunes window(as seen here). There are sync options at the bottom of the Summary preferences tab and there are individual tabs for music, videos, photos, info(calendar, contacts, etc.). ringtones, podcasts, and applications. For example, click on the Music tab, and the iPhone music preferences appear, where you can choose which playlists get uploaded or if all of your play lists and songs get transferred to your iPhone.

iTip:Syncing contacts Added to your iPhone
If you add a contact to your contacts list from right within your iPhone, the next time you sync up with your computer, it adds that contact to your computer's contact list, so both your iPhone and your computer stay in sync

Using your iPhone's Touchscreen

The touchscreen on your iPhone's high-resolution screen works amazingly well, and there are just a few little techniques to learn so you're not only very accurate when using it, but have fun as well. Here are the three biggies:

1. Don't press too hard. It just takes light tap on the touchscreen to activate any button or select any item.
2. Aim your finger either at the center of the button or object you want to select, or just above the center. If you aim any lower, you'll probably select the object below what you are trying to select.
3. To Scroll in the touchscreen, or move an object(like a slider), you touch the screen lightly and just "swipe" from to right across the screen(Apple calls this "flicking," but it feels more like to swipe to me). For example, to see the album art in your iPhone's iPod, just touch an album lightly with your finger and slide it over to the left (or right). you don't have to slide very far at all - plus, you can just kind of flick it to scroll or move faster.(Oh, now I get that whole "flicking" thing.)

Using the Apple Headset(Headphones)

If you're listening to music. videos, etc, you'll want to use the headset that comes with your iPhone. It plugs right into the headset jack at the iPhone. Here's why Apple calls it a "headset" rather than "Headphone": If you're listing to something on the iPhone and a call comes in, you can pause whatever you're listening to and take the call by pressing a tiny button attached to the headset's cord (shown circled above). You don't have to pick up the phone to talk, because there's a tiny mic built into that button. You can also use this button to switch music tracks when you're listening to your iPhone's iPod. To pause, you just click the button once. To skip, click two times quickly. But it does even more than that. For example, if you're on one call and you get another call (via call waiting), click once to hold the current call and then take the incoming call, if you want the incoming call to go straight to your voice mail, just click-and-hold the button for a few seconds, and when you let go, of it goes. Lastly, if you're on one call and another call comes in, and you want to hang up from your first call and take this new call, you click-and hold the button for a couple of seconds until you hear two little beeps, which lets you know that you've hung up with caller #1, and you're now on with caller #2. Also, if you have an iPhone 3GS, you can use the + (plus sign) and -(minus sign) buttons on the headset's button to control the volume.

Using the Built-In Keyboard

Any time you need to type something on your iPhone, a keyboard automatically appears onscreen. The keys are kind of small, but as you type, a large version of the letter you just typed pops up in front of your finger so you can see instantly if you hit the right letter. I can tell you from experience that the more you use this keyboard, the easier it gets, so if you wind up misspelling just about every word when you first start, don't sweat it - in just a couple of days, you'll be misspelling only every third or fourth word. There's also a pretty clever auto-complete function. Although it will suggest a word while you're typing it, go ahead and finish the word (especially if you've spelled it wrong) and it will replace your misspelled word with the correct word (95% of the time). You do have to get used to typing a word, seeing that you've misspelled it, and continuing to type. If you do that, you'll be amazed at how quickly you'll be able to type using this keyboard

iTip: Fixing your Typos

If you need to go back and fix a typo that the auto-complete feature didn't catch, just press-and-hold approximately where the typo occurred and a magnifying Loupe appears onscreen so you can only clearly see the location of your cursor, but you can move the cursor with your finger, as well, to quickly let you fix the mistake.

What those icons at the Top of the iPhone Screen Are for

Your iPhone displays lots of little status icons across the very top of its touchscreen to help you know what's going on in its world. The little bars on the top left show the current signal strength, followed by the name of your cell phone provider(or, if you're roaming, who you're roaming with). The next icon over shows the network you're connected to (if you're in an area with an open high-speed wireless network, your iPhone lets you jump on that network - you will see the Wi-Fi icon and the more bars it has, the stronger the connection, If not , it uses a cellular data network[3G, EDGE. or GPRS] - you'll see a small 3G, E or 0 icon up top - which is somewhat slower). If you see the icon of an airplane up there, you're in Airplane mode, which means your phone, Bluetooth, and internet connections are turned off. If you're playing music on your iPhone, you will see a mini play icon up there, and if you've got an alarm set (using the Clock function), then you'll see a mini clock icon, If you see a blue or white Bluetooth icon up there, it means your iPhone is connected to a Bluetooth device (like a wireless headset or Bluetooth car connection). If the Bluetooth logo is gray, Bluetooth is on, but nothings connected. you can pretty much figure what the bettery icon is for.

Find Out how much Battery Time is Left

At the top-right corner of your iPhone's touchscreen is a little battery charge indicator icon. If it's solid white, you're fully charged. Ig it's half-filled, so is you battery. If you get low on battery power, don't worry - your iPhone will let you know. A message will appear when you're down to just a 20% battery charge, and then it will warm you again when it gets to a 10% charge. When you plug your iPhone into your computer or AC adapter to charge your iPhone, a really huge battery icon appears onscreen(it doesn't really appear - it dominates your screen), so you can see the current battery charge status from across the room.

iTip: How to tell when you're done charging
If you're charging your iPhone, your battery charge icon (up in the top-right corner of your screen) will have a lighting bolt on it. If your battery is fully charged, it displays a power plug graphic on the battery icon instead

Using your iPhone's Built-In Speaker

To use your iPhone's speakerphone, just tap the Speaker button that appears onscreen while your call is in progress. When you tap that button, it will turn solid blue to let you know the speakerphone is active. To turn the speakerphone off, tap that solid blue button again

iTip:Keeping Your iPhone Private

Want to keep the info on your iPhone private? Then password protect it. So each time it wakes from sleep it asks you to input your secret four-digit password.

Adjusting the Volume

There is a volume control on the top-left side of your iPhone(Shown circled here in red) that controls the ringer volume - each time you press the top of the volume, and the bottom of the button decreases it with each press. When you change the ringer volume using this button, you'll see the volume bar temporarily appear on screen so you can easily see your current volume setting as you adjust it. Although this button controls the ringer volume, it's a "context sensitive control," so once you make a call, it automatically switches to control the volume of your phone call(that way, if you're making your call in a busy place like an airport, you can turn up the volume so you can hear your call), if you're playing a song or a video using the iPod, the button switches to control their volume.