Unofficial iPhone Blog

Syncing notes with the iPhone

One of the major limitations to the iPhone’s Notes app is that you can’t sync it with data from any application on your Mac. There’s a work-around, however—each contact has a notes field. So create a fake contact and paste any info you’d like to keep with you in the notes field for that contact in Address Book. One sync later, and all that info will be at your fingertips.

Rebooting your iPhone

Pretend for a moment that your iPhone suddenly becomes unresponsive. Pushing the Home button does nothing. Hitting the On/Off button produces the same discouraging result. What do you do? Apple’s first reset tip is to press and hold the Home button for about six seconds to quit any application that might have locked up your iPhone. If that doesn’t work, trying pressing and holding both Home and On/Off; after about 10 seconds the Apple logo will appear.

(This reboot trick takes a little big longer than the iPod equivalent—holding down Select and Menu usually restarts your music player after four seconds.)

Some more…..

1. Double tap the Caps key on the keyboard and it will change to blue and remain in Caps mode until you tap it again.
2. If you are using custom IMAP account, you may need to set the following to view other folders: Settings | Mail | IMAP Account | Advanced | IMAP Path Prefix = “INBOX” (without quotes).
3. To check bill balance or remaining voice minutes, go to Settings | Phone | AT&T Services then click “Check Bill Balance” or “View My Minutes” button. Free SMS will arrive in few seconds.
4. If something is not syncing right (one of the events in Calendar wasn’t syncing with iCal for some reason), run iSync (yes, iSync) and select Reset Sync History under Preferences.
5. Safari tip: I sync my bookmarks with my Mac, but navigating through them on the iPhone is annoying. So on my Mac I made a new “iPhone” bookmark folder at the top level of Safari’s bookmarks view, and copied the bookmarks I use on the iPhone into it. And as I find out about new iPhone-customized sites, I add them to that folder in Safari. Then on the iPhone I just leave the bookmarks view at that folder, and all the relevant bookmarks are right there.

Source: MacWorld

Create e-mail folders

Well, actually, you can’t create e-mail folders on the iPhone. What you can do, however, with an IMAP e-mail account is create folders on the IMAP server—for example, if you have a .Mac account, using the .Mac Web Mail interface. Those folders will then appear on the iPhone, and their contents will—eventually—be synced between the iPhone and the server

Save e-mail messages as drafts

If you want to save a message you’re working on so you can come back to it later, tap Cancel. Instead of deleting the message immediately, Mail pops up a dialog asking you to Save, Don’t Save, or Cancel. Tap Save and the message is placed in your Drafts folder. If your account doesn’t currently have a Drafts folder, Mail will create one. However, don’t be alarmed if the message doesn’t appear in Drafts immediately; in my testing, it takes a while to show up.

Pick where you listen to voicemail

If you’ve got a Bluetooth headset, incoming calls get routed there automatically—not so when you call up Visual Voicemail. However, an Audio button on the Visual Voicemail screen lets you set where you listen to your message: the handset, the built-in speaker, or a Bluetooth headset.

Find another way to scroll through Contacts

Everyone knows that you can scroll through the Contacts list on your iPhone two different ways—either flick your finger on the list to scroll up or down, or tap on one of the letters on the alphabet running down the right side of the screen to jump to contacts beginning with that letter. But there is a third way: hold your finger on the alphabetical list and then slide up and down—you’ll be able to scroll through your Contacts in a more controlled manner than by flicking your finger.

Use the Favorites and Recents list for more than just phone calls

Favorites and Recents are part of the main Phone screen; the former is iPhone’s version of frequently called numbers while the latter is a list of people who you’ve called and whose calls you missed. But this is not just a phone feature—assuming the numbers in Favorites and Recents belong to a mobile phone, you can send them an SMS message. Just tap the > button next to the contact name or number and then tap the Text Message button at the bottom of the contact listing.

Save time in driving directions

One of the primary uses for the iPhone’s Map application is to get driving directions. Both the starting point and destination fields offer the Bookmarks button, so you can quickly use a bookmark, recent location, or contact when searching for directions. The first thing you should do in Maps is find your own address and then bookmark it—this will make finding directions to and from locations as easy as tapping your home bookmark.

As with the iPod, the iPhone lets you set the speed of audiobook playback.

Recreate some of the iPod’s audio controls

If you listen to an audiobook on an iPod, you probably know that, ever since the fourth-generation iPod’s release, you can alter the playback speed to make it go faster or slower as your preferences dictate. That feature makes its way over to the iPhone as well. Just tap Settings and then the iPod option; tap the Audiobook Speed entry and in the resulting screen, tap to choose among Slower, Normal, or Faster.

In fact, that’s just one iPod feature that also appears on the iPhone. You can also use the Settings screen to turn on Sound Check (the feature that makes volume more consistent from one track to another) and change the EQ with 22 included equalization presets.

Change your iPod icons

By default, the icons on the bottom of the iPod screen are Playlists, Artists, Songs, Videos, and More. You can change those first four, just as you would the commands that appear on an iPod’s main screen. Simply tap the More icon and, in the More screen, tap the Edit button at the top-left of the screen. A Configure screen will wipe up from the bottom and display 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 screen, just tap and hold on an icon and drag it over the icon you want to replace. Tap Done when you’re done.

Say goodbye to already-viewed videos

Even owners of the largest-capacity iPhone might feel constrained by the 8GB limit when it comes to storing videos. A full-length motion picture takes up around 1GB of storage, which is a significant chunk of space for just one piece of media. To help ease the storage crunch however, the iPhone offers to delete videos after you’ve finished watching them; just tap a button and Pirates of the Caribbean will disappear off your iPhone, freeing up more space.