Go into the iPod mode of your iPhone and you’ll have already noticed that the four icons at the bottom of the screen are used to select the Album, Artist or Podcast that you want to listen to.
If these aren’t the things you’ll want to go to most often, and you’d rather have a different quick link here, Apple has made this easy to reconfigure.
To do this, tap on the More icon on the right-hand side of the screen and then the Edit one in the top left-hand corner.
Now you’re free to add any new quick links you’d like, including Composers, Compilations and Audiobooks. Simply press down on the new icon you want and then drag it over the one you want to replace.
Quick scroll
There are two ways to scroll through a long list – either songs or your contacts list. You can just flick your finger on the screen, or you can tap on the corresponding letter of the alphabet running down the right-hand side of the window.
If your list is particularly large, though, this could be time-consuming, and there are times when you’ll want to scroll through things more quickly. How is it done?
Well, try holding your finger down on the alphabet and you can then move your finger up and down the list, which you should find much faster than just flicking through it
Reboot iPhone
As much as we hate to admit it, there will be times when your iPod touch or iPhone doesn’t behave quite as it’s supposed to. If you find that it appears to have crashed, then you can try to hold down the Home button for around six seconds to reset it.
If that doesn’t work, though, then we recommend that you press down both the Home button and the Sleep button on the top of the iPhone together.
After about four seconds the Slide to power off message appears, but if you keep both buttons held down then it’ll reset after around ten seconds and the screen will change to a black one with an Apple logo.
Safari Tips
We still haven’t become bored with how the iPhone lets us have a fully functioning (well, almost) Safari browser in our pockets. It’s just fantastic! Here are a few useful tips to make sure you’re getting the most from it:
- Share link - if you’re on a site and want to share the link with someone, simply tap on the Address bar at the top of the screen and the Share button will create a message for you that includes it.
- Quick jump - navigating a page on your iPhone may be about as straightforward as it possibly could be – that’s the joy of using it. But if you want to jump from the bottom of a long page to the top in a flash, then just touch the top bar of the iPhone and you’ll instantly leap back to the top of the current page.
- RSS - if you view a lot of news sites on the internet then it might be worth considering linking to their RSS feed area, rather than the main page – presuming, of course, that the site has one. That way, you’ll find that the site will load much faster and you’ll be able to access the news you want without your browser having to spend valuable time loading up countless images and page furniture.
- Window in window - to scroll through copy that’s in a separate window on a website, simply put two fingers inside the box and move them apart slowly. If you’ve done this properly, you should find that the smaller box scrolls while the main page stays in the same place.
Power-Saving Tips
The iPhone’s battery consumption is pretty good, but here are a few ideas to make it even better:
- Brightness - it might be self-explanatory, but if you turn down the brightness level for the iPhone’s screen you can save a chunk of battery. Go to Settings > Brightness and then drag the slider to around 50%.
- Email - the more your iPhone checks your mail account, the more power it uses. If you want to adjust how frequently it looks for new emails, go to Settings > Mail > Auto-Check and change it so that it only checks, say, every half an hour or once an hour.
- Turn it off - if you’re not likely to use either your WiFi connection or your Bluetooth one, then you might as well turn them off. Go to Settings > WiFi to switch that off, and head to Settings > General > Bluetooth to deactivate your Bluetooth connection.
International help
Typing in URLs on any keyboard is tedious, but it’s even more so on the iPhone. Apple has gone some way to ease this matter with the .com button, but what if you’re based in the UK, France or Germany? Presumably, if you want to access websites local to you then you have to type the URL in full. Or do you? Actually, you don’t.
The good news, is if you go to Settings > General > Keyboards > International Keyboards, you can change the language to one that’s more suitable for the country you’re living in. Then, when you’re back on the keyboard, just click on the picture of a globe and choose the particular keyboard you want.
Now, when you press the iPhone’s .com button you should be able to choose the URL extension you want without doing any unnecessary typing.
Faster keyboard
There’s been a lot of negative feedback about the iPhone’s keyboard, but we’re not sure what all the fuss is about, especially when you consider that most people have been happy to type in texts on mobile phones for years.
