Ultimate List of iPhone Tips and Tricks

Many of us may think that iPhone is very beautiful and powerful. However, how many of us have actually used its full potential? Do you know all of the tips and tricks of your iPhone? If you don’t, I am sure the following Ultimate List of iPhone Tips and Tricks will help you a lot.

1) Get URL Hints
In Safari, you can press and hold any links in order to see the URL and site name of the link.

2) Dismiss Keyboard Suggested Word
To dismiss the keyboard suggested spelling of a word, you can tap on anywhere of the screen. You do not have to press “x” button at the end of the word.

3) Scroll to the Top of the Page
When you are using iPhone applications, you can automatically scroll to the top of the page by tapping on the “top bar”, which has the time, service bars and the battery information. In Safari, this will also brings up the URL address bar as well.

4) Different Domain Suffix
Hold down the “.com” button, you can see a popup comes up with “.net, .edu and .org” buttons. Slide your finger from them and then release your finger to choose.

5) Domain Resolution
When typing a URL in Safari, you don’t have to type the “www” or the “.com”. For exmaple, you can type “GGiPhone” in the URL box in order to view “GGiPhone.com”.

6) Take Screenshots Anytime
You can take any screenshots at anytime easily on your iPhone. First of all, press and hold the “Home” button and then click the “Sleep” button once. The screen will flash white and the screenshot will be stored in your camera roll immediately.

7) Save Images in Safari
When you are browsing any web pages on Safari. You simply touch the image and hold your finger until a menu show up, select Save Image.The downloaded image is located under your Photo / Camera Roll.

8 ) Inserting a Period
When you are typing on you iPhone, simply double tapping the “Space Bar” button at the end of a sentence, it will automatically insert a period followed by a space. It saves you a lot of time instead of pressing “124″ to get the numbers and symbols page where the period located in.

9) Alternative Way to Navigate Screens
You can tab the bottom right or left corner to switch between different screens instead of swiping your finger across the screen.

10) Alternate Characters
Hold down a letter on the keyboard, you can see popup comes up with various versions of the character.

11) Move Dock Icons
Just press and hold any icons on the screen, then drag them while they are shaking. You can put any 4 icons on your dock (grey bar at the bottom of your iPhone).

12) Fit-to-page Column, word and Picture
When browsing web pages on Safari, you can double tap on a column, word or picture to fit it’s width to your iPhone’s screen.

13) Select Icon for Bookmarked Webpage
When you are browsing a web page on Safari and add its icon to your home screen by pressing the “+” button and select “Add to Home Screen”. The icon is a screenshot of the page you were on. You can have a different icon by zooming in a particular item on the page. It can be the website’s logo or any picture.

14) Scrolling with Two Fingers
Some web pages contains separate text boxes with their own scroll bars. If you are trying to move around in one, you can scroll it with two fingers instead of one. That will let you scroll just inside the box and not affect the position of the entire page.

15) Maximize Battery Life
There is a separate sensor situated right above the earpiece, that detects ambient light. The iPhone uses this sensor only once per session, just as you unlock the handset. But if you cover the sensor as you unlock the phone, you will trikc the handset into thinking it’s in a dark room, and it will power down the screen brightness. You can Also turn off Bluetooth and WiFi if you don’t expect to use them for a while. You can also set email fetch time to “Hourly” or “Manually”, and turn the “Push” off in order to save energy.

16) Reset Your iPhone
Press and hold the “Home” Button and the “Sleep” Button to Reset your iPhone. A white light will flash, the screen will shut off and then turn back on. Please keep holding both buttons until the screen turns back on.

17) Insert Punctuation Quickly
To enter any punctuations while using iPhone keyboard, you can press and hold the “123″ button and slide your finger over to any punctuation button. And then the punctuation will be inserted after you have released the button.

18) Get a Bigger Keyboard
When you are using the on-screen keyboard on Safari, you can rotate the iPhone horizontally before tapping on the address bar, the Safari window will switch to horizontal mode. Now you can have a much larger keyboard, making data entry a little easier.

19) Changing iPod Icons
By the default, the buttons at the bottom of the iPod scren are “Playlists”, “Artists”, “Songs”, “Videos”, and “More”. You can change them by pressing the “More” button, and then tap on the “Edit” button in the upper left corner. A Configure screen will appear with icons for “Albums”, “Podcasts”, “Audiobooks”, “Genres”, “Composers”, “Compilations”, “Playlists”, “Artists”, “Songs”, and “Videos”. To substitute one of these icons for one that appears at the bottom of the iPod screen, just tap and hold on the icon you prefer and drag it over the icon you want to replace. Tap on Done when you’re finished.

20) Make a Call from Safari
If you find any phone numbers in Safari you would like to call, you do not need to jump to the phone component. Just tap on the number, and the iPhone will dial it for you immediately.

iPhone Tips and Tricks: Using the Phone

Handling Incoming Calls

If you would like to silence an incoming call, just press the sleep/wake button on the top of the phone. If, instead, you would like to send the call directly to your voicemail, press this button twice.

Entering Pauses To Automated Number Series Dialing.

A lot of times you want to automate dialing a series of numbers. We do this all the time for calling cards, extensions, etc. For example, I have a telecom number at work and I want to dial the main number, wait a second or two and then dial the passcode for me. On my blackberry it was an X to insert a pause, but on iPhone it is a comma. Here is how it looks in my contact: 18005555555,,1234567. The two commas created a long enough pause for me to make this work for me.

Avoiding 411 charges

Instead of calling regular 411 to get information (and an extra charge on your phone bill), Google by voice by calling 1-800-GOOG-411 to get a street address or phone number. Some Lifehacker readers say GOOG 411 works better than others; if you haven’t tried it, here’s a YouTube clip (courtesy of Google) on how to give it a try

Avoid Calls from certain People using silent ringtone

Do you have people calling you that you want to ignore? Create a silent ringtone and make a contact for them and set the ringtone to silent.

Trick Automated Phone Bots into Thinking your Phone is Dead.

If you’ve got automated phone marketers or political campaigns or debt collectors ringing your phone at all hours, trick the system into thinking your phone’s dead. Add the U.S. Special Information Tone signal for “vacant circuit”to the beginning of your voicemail greeting to automatically unsubscribe your phone number from bot call lists.

Getting your Voicemail when Roaming

If you are roaming and visual voicemail is unavailable, you can call your own phone number and get your voicemail the old fashioned way.

1. Enter your 10-digit wireless number
2. Interrupt your personal greeting by pressing the “*” key
3. Enter your voice mail password
4. Use the standard keys to manage your messages. (7 to delete, 33 to skip to the end, etc)

Avoid Roaming Charges While Traveling

to avoid roaming charges, set your phone to “unconditional call forwarding” that way, your phone will NOT ring while you are roaming (calls go STRAIGHT to voicemail). to do that, follow these instructions:
# On your phone, dial *#62# and click Send.
# Phone number of your voicemail will be displayed.
# Write down the number (including +1)
# Dial **21*+1xxxyyyzzzz*11# and hit Send. +1xxxyyyzzzz is the number you wrote down previously to forward your calls automatically to your voice mail.
# Dial *#21# to verify that the new settings are active.
# When no longer desired, dial ##002# to reset back to normal.

Copying voicemail messages to your computer

If you want to save that favorite voicemail message to your PC so you can save it for all time, follow these steps.

1. First, if you haven’t already, jailbreak your iPhone 2.0 (here’s the Windows method). This will install an OpenSSH server on your device that lets you transfer files from it to your computer.
2. On the iPhone, under Settings->Wi-Fi, select the network you have joined to view connection details. Write down the phone’s IP address.
3. Fire up your favorite FTP client. (I like the not-free but great Transmit, butthe free FileZilla works, too.)
4. Using your FTP program, connect to the device’s IP address with username root and password alpine (unless you’ve changed your password). You’ll need to use SFTP (secure FTP), not plain FTP.
5. Once you’re connected to the device, browse to/private/var/mobile/Library/Voicemail/ to view the list of VM files. They’re saved as .AMR files, which QuickTime can play. Transfer them to your computer and you’re done.

Create Speed dial icons for your screen using Qlink

A very nice person created a web site that lets you associate a phone number with a web page so that you can create a Homepage bookmark that dials a number. Click here for instructions.

Using Favorites to Create a Speed Dial List

Most people have figured this one out, but I recently talked to two people lately who hadn’t put it all together. You can set up your phone so that pressing the home button twice (In Settings/General/Home Button/Phone Favorites) brings up your contact list Favorites list. This makes dialing a number simply pressing the home button twice and then selecting one of your favorites in the list.

Reordering Favorites in Phone on iPhone

Favorites are usually displayed in the order they’re added to the Favorites list. But they can be reordered in whatever way you want. It’s as easy as drag and drop.

1. In the Favorites screen, press Edit.
2. Tap the three-line icon and hold it.
3. The favorite you’ve selected will become active (when active, it appears to be slightly above the other favorites).
4. Drag the favorite to the position in the list you want it to have and let it go.
5. Click “done” in the top left and your favorites will be reordered.

Secret Service Numbers