iPhone E-mail

Unlike many other smartphones, your iPhone can send, receive, and browse e-mail without getting weighed down with compromise. The iPhone doesn’t settle for cramped, odd presentations. Your e-mail looks the way it should—the way it would if you were reading it on your home computer. That’s because the iPhone provides an HTMLcompatible rich-text client. Mail looks better because the client is better. It’s made to work right.

iPhone mail works with most industry-standard e-mail systems. With it, you can send and receive photos; view Excel spreadsheets, PDF files, and Word documents; manage your accounts; and more.


Compatibility
iPhone Mail is surprisingly compatible. It works with virtually all major e-mail providers, including Gmail, AOL, Yahoo!, and Comcast. For businesses, iPhone plays relatively well with Microsoft Exchange. This high level of provider support is because of the iPhone’s support of industry-standard protocols. The iPhone understands the most popular email standards, namely, POP, IMAP, SMTP, and Exchange. If you’re not already familiar with these standards, here’s a brief overview.


POP
POP (aka POP3) stands for Post Office Protocol. It’s probably the most common e-mail retrieval protocol in use today. It allows mail clients to connect to a server such as Gmail or AOL, retrieve messages, and disconnect afterward. This usually happens on a set schedule, such as every ten minutes or every hour; you do not receive mail until your client connects to the server and requests that new mail. POP works by checking in with a server, downloading your e-mail, and optionally leaving the original copies of your e-mail on the server. This leave-on-server option works well with the iPhone, because when you’re on the go, you probably want to check your mail on the iPhone and retrieve it again later when you get back to the office or return home. POP also has its downsides. Unlike the newer and improved IMAP protocol, POP downloads entire messages all at once, so it’s a bit of a space hog on portable devices. The 3 in POP3 indicates the third version of the protocol standard; POP1 and POP2 are obsolete.


SMTP
Mail clients use one protocol for receiving mail and another for sending mail. Your iPhone uses Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to send outgoing messages. SMTP contacts a mail server and transmits messages you’ve written along with any attachments including text, photos, and so forth. A common kind of SMTP, called SMTP-AUTH (AUTH stands for authorization), allows you to send secure, authorized mail. You provide your account name and a password. Your mail client authenticates itself to the server, and your e-mail is sent on its way.

The iPhone makes sending authenticated e-mail easy. Enter your account name and password into the Mail settings pane. Once you’ve done this, just use outgoing mail to send a note, share a web page’s URL, or pass along a photo that you’ve just snapped with the iPhone’s built-in camera. The iPhone takes care of all the protocol issues. You decide what to send and to whom to send it.


IMAP
IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. Like POP3, it allows you to receive e-mail on the iPhone. It’s a newer and more flexible protocol. As the name suggests, IMAP was built around the Internet. It introduces advanced ways to connect to the mail server and use the limited bandwidth of mobile connections in the most efficient way. The key to understanding IMAP is to recognize that messages are meant to live on the server rather than go through a retrieve-and-delete cycle. You manage your mail on the IMAP server. You read your mail on a client, like the iPhone.

When you download mail with POP, you download entire messages. When you download mail with IMAP, you download headers instead, at least initially. Headers are the bit that tells you who the mail is from and what it’s about. You don’t download the main body of the message until you explicitly request it from the server. Since the header occupies only a fraction of the space of the message, you can download IMAP data a lot faster than you download POP. The rest of the message stays on the server until you’re ready to read it.

The same thing goes for attachments. Say that someone sends you a 10MB video. It doesn’t get downloaded to your iPhone. It stays on the server until you’re ready to watch it on your home computer. If you’d downloaded the message with POP, the entire video would have transferred with the message. With IMAP, you can read the message that came along with the video without having to download the video file itself until you’re ready to watch it. The video attachment waits for you on the mail server.

IMAP also offers a feature that’s called push e-mail. Geeks will tell you that technically speaking IMAP is not exactly the same thing as push e-mail. True push e-mail reaches out and tells your e-mail client whenever new mail arrives in the system. Instead, your iPhone IMAP client connects to and gently tickles the server until new mail arrives. This kind of always-on connection allows the iPhone to receive mail almost as soon as it arrives on the server. In practice, there’s better intention there with push-style mail than actual results. Yahoo! and Gmail offer free IMAP accounts for iPhone users. To sign up for an account, point your browser to http://mail.yahoo.com or http://gmail.com.


Microsoft Exchange
Microsoft Exchange provides e-mail along with other enterprise-level services intended to support Outlook on the Web, personal computers, and mobile devices. Past versions of the iPhone did not support Exchange without, well, jumping through hoops. Exchange Server administrators had to open all sorts of security holes to get it to work, and they usually weren’t too happy about doing that. Fortunately, iOS 4 provides much better compatibility with Microsoft Exchange, to the point that you can now configure multiple Exchange ActiveSync accounts on your iPhone for business use.

Exchange is more than just e-mail, though—it’s also about sharing calendars and contacts. Since iOS 4, iPhones can receive push e-mail from an Exchange Server, access a company-wide global address list, accept or create calendar invitations, and even search e-mails that are stored on the server.

If you’re using your iPhone in a corporate setting that uses Microsoft Exchange Server, it’s best to work with your IT department to ensure that your device is connected to the server in the most secure way possible. If they’re not familiar with how the iPhone works with Exchange, Apple has provided a white paper on Exchange deployment that is free to download: http://images.apple.com/iphone/business/docs/iPhone_EAS.pdf.

Source of Information :  Taking Your iPhone 4 to the Max

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Three Ways iPhone Messaging Is Better Than What’s Available on Other Phones

When it comes to messaging, the iPhone offers several advantages over the rest of the field. First, there’s the keyboard. The iPhone keyboard is far easier to use than any other cell phone keyboard. It makes it simple to type and edit messages.

For years, teenagers have been wearing their fingers to a nub texting each other. Texting on standard cell phones is hard work. Because of this, an entire language of texting shorthand has sprung up from “lol” (laughing out loud) to “pos” (parents are watching over my shoulder) to “kthxbai” (OK, thank you, good bye). The idea is to keep everything short and easy to type. Unfortunately, clarity is sacrificed to ease of typing. The iPhone brings simple typing back and allows you to properly say “thank you,” instead of “ty” or “thx.”

Second, the iPhone remembers conversations. You can easily see entire text conversations on a single screen. The iPhone organizes messages by sender, not by date or time. This means that messages from one person, even messages that are separated by hours or days, are grouped together into one easy-to-read presentation.

Third, the iPhone makes it easy to do all the stuff connected with messaging that should be connected with messaging, such as calling the person back directly or updating your calendar when someone mentions meeting you for dinner. Jump out of the text program
(tap Home), pop over to your calendar, and then return exactly where you left off.

NOTE: If you’re new to texting and your text partner is used to cell phone keys, you might want to acquaint yourself with the keypress-saving SMS shorthand. Those abbreviations are more likely to come up with experienced texters. Search the Internet for text message abbreviations for assistance.

Source of Information :  Taking Your iPhone 4 to the Max

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A Variety of Chats with iPhone

Your iPhone is not only a powerful phone but also a messaging heavyweight. It supports text and multimedia messaging out of the box, can do AIM-style instant messaging and Internet chats with third-party apps, and can even be used for voice and video chats. Social networking services have expanded exponentially over the past few years, and the iPhone has been at the forefront of this explosion.

Messaging allows you to communicate instantly with colleagues and friends. It brings people closer together without relying on the immediacy of a phone call. Instant messaging is asynchronous; you send a message, and the recipient can respond to it (or not) at their leisure. That’s unlike a phone conversation, which is synchronous, where you and the recipient have an immediate back-and-forth interchange of ideas.

Several big players dominate the messaging world: e-mail, SMS, MMS, IM, IRC, Facebook, and Twitter. If these names already sound familiar to you, feel free to skip ahead. If not, don’t let the acronyms dampen your enthusiasm. You are probably already familiar with these technologies. Here’s a quick rundown:

• SMS: SMS stands for Short Message Service. It’s the feature that most people call text messaging. With it, you can send short messages from one phone to another. It lets you carry on typed conversations without placing a voice-based call. The iPhone fully supports SMS messaging, and it’s the most common way to conduct iPhone chats. SMS operates on the same network as your voice phone calls, so it often works when your data connection is down. SMS messages can arrive any time your phone is turned on, and they don’t require a special app to be running on your iPhone.

• MMS: MMS is the multimedia version of SMS; it stands for Multimedia Messaging Service. MMS messages can include audio, video, and images, and text can be formatted to include multiple fonts as well as italics and bold. If a picture can tell a thousand words, sending an MMS message with a photo might keep you from doing a lot of unnecessary text messaging. As with SMS, MMS works over the voice network, not the data network.

• IM: IM means instant messaging. It’s a way to communicate in real time by typing text. If you use AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, or iChat, you’re using IM. There are many instant messaging apps for the iPhone, so you’ll be able to keep in touch with your friends and co-workers easily.

• IM is different from text and multimedia messaging in five key ways. First, it requires a connection to a data network. Second, the service itself is free—you pay only for the data plan on your iPhone. Next, it can allow typed conversations with more than one person at a time. Fourth, you need to sign into an IM server. The server acts as the gateway for messages to pass between you and others. Finally, it requires that your IM app be up and running for the duration of the chat. If you’ve quit the app, you’re not going to receive messages.

• IRC: Internet Relay Chat is a relatively ancient (1988) messaging technology that’s still going strong. You can find IRC clients for nearly every operating system on Earth. Third-party developers have created IRC apps for iPhone, so you can continue using IRC into the future. Like IM apps, IRC apps must be constantly connected to a server in order to send and receive messages, and you must sign in to the server before conducting a typed conversation.

• SMS, MMS, IM, and IRC messages also have one thing in common compared to email; the messages are much shorter. Although you might provide a complete business proposal to a client in an email, you’d be much more likely to send a short “I’m on my way home” message to your spouse in an SMS message.

• Facebook: As of July 2010, Facebook had more than 500 million users. It’s a way for many people to get together and find friends, old and new. With your iPhone, you never need to be out of touch with Facebook. Facebook requires you to log into the Facebook service and use a special Facebook app to send messages, photos, and videos to your friends.

• Twitter: Twitter answers the question “What are you doing right now?” in 140 characters or less and then displays your answer to the world. There are many Twitter apps for iPhone, so you can find one that fits your particular style of tweeting. Tweets are essentially one-way blasts of information to the world, although two-way conversations that are tweeted back and forth are common. Twitter requires a special app and a connection to the Twitter service.

Source of Information : Taking Your iPhone 4 to the Max

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iPhone Typing Tricks

Once you’re comfortable with the keyboard, there are further ways to make typing easier. Here are a few more iPhone typing tricks you can use to make your keyboard entry faster and easier.


Contractions
When you want to type a contraction like can’t or shouldn’t, don’t bother putting in the apostrophe. The iPhone is smart enough to guess that cant is can’t. Of course, if you’re referring to a slope or tilt, be sure to tap the word itself to decline the change from the noun to the contraction.

If you’re typing a word like we’ll, where the uncontracted word well is a common word, just add an extra l. The iPhone corrects welll to we’ll and shelll to she’ll.

TIP: Other contraction tricks include itsa, which gets corrected to its, and weree, which gets corrected to we’re.


Punctuation Dragging
If you plan to use only one item of punctuation at a time, such as a comma or period, save time by dragging. Drag from the .?123 button to the item you want to include. By starting the drag at .?123, the iPhone switches momentarily to the numbers and punctuation view. After selecting your item, the keyboard automatically bounces back to the alphabet.

TIP: Another punctuation trick for the end of sentences is to tap .?123, the punctuation item you want to use, and then the spacebar. The iPhone is smart enough to recognize the end of a sentence and put you back in alphabet mode. You can also double-tap the spacebar to add a period followed by a space.


Accents
Tap and hold any keyboard letter to view accented versions of that letter. For example, tapping and holding N presents you with the option of adding n, ´n, or ñ. This shortcut makes it much easier to type foreign words.

If you need to do a lot of typing in a foreign language, you can add new keyboards to your iPhone by going to Settings ➤ General ➤ Keyboard, tapping International Keyboards, and then adding the keyboards you need from a palette of 51 that are available. To use the keyboards to enter text, open a keyboard, and then tap the small globe to the left of the spacebar, which will display a list of the international keyboards you have installed. Yes, you too can write in Russian on any iPhone.


Caps Lock
To enable Caps Lock, go to Settings ➤ General ➤ Keyboard Preferences. When that’s enabled, you can double-tap the Caps button to toggle the lock on and off.


Deleting Multiple Words at a Time
When you press and hold the Delete key, it starts off by deleting one letter and then the next. But if you hold it for longer than about a line of text, it switches to word deletion and starts removing entire words at a time, making it easier to clear text quickly.


Autocapitalization
Autocapitalization means the iPhone automatically capitalizes the start of sentences. So, you can type the day has begun, and the iPhone is smart enough to capitalize the: “The day has begun.” This means you don’t have to worry about pressing the Shift key at the beginning of every sentence or even when you type i because i went to the park becomes I went to the park.

TIP: Enable or disable autocapitalization in Settings ➤ General ➤ Keyboard Preferences.


iPhone Typing Test
You may be curious just how fast you can type on your iPhone keyboard. There are several apps in the App Store that can test your typing speed. Search the App Store for typing test to find those apps.

Source of Information :  Taking Your iPhone 4 to the Max

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Organizing iPhone Apps with Folders

iOS 4 brought a smile to the face of many longtime iPhone users with the addition of folders. Previously, app icons could not be organized except by locating them all on the same page. Each page could contain up to 16 apps, so if you had a lot of apps, you were often flipping through ten or more screens of apps to find the one you needed.

Now, iOS 4 provides folders. Each folder can hold up to 12 apps, and each Home screen can have up to 12 folders—that’s 144 apps per screen, not including those in the Home row at the bottom of the iPhone display.

Here are some tips on creating and using folders:
» To organize similar apps into folders, tap and hold one app until it begins to wiggle, and then drag and drop it on another app of the same type. For example, to create a game folder, you can tap and hold the Angry Birds app icon until it wiggles and then drag it over to the icon and drop it. Since both apps are in the Games category of the iTunes App Store, the iPhone automatically selects Games as the name of the folder.

» Once a folder is created, you can add any other app (up to a total of 12) to it by repeating the process of dragging and dropping icons.

» To rename a folder, tap and hold the folder icon until it wiggles. Tap the folder icon, and the folder opens with an editable title at the top. When you’re done renaming the folder, press the Home button to save the new name.

» You can also organize your apps and folders in iTunes. With your iPhone connected to your computer, click its name under Devices in the iTunes sidebar, and then click the Apps tab. In the image on the right side of the iTunes screen, drag and drop app icons to organize them the way that you want them.

Source of Information :  Taking Your iPhone 4 to the Max

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iPhone Power Tricks

There are many ways to switch your iPhone on and off. The following are the most important methods that every iPhone owner should know.


Unlocking Your iPhone
When your iPhone has been idle for a while, it automatically locks, and the screen goes dark. When this happens, press Home. To unlock your phone, swipe the slider from the left to the right. The lock screen clears, and the Home screen springs into place.

Screen locking is a form of power saving. If your iPhone never turned off its bright display, it would go through a battery charge much faster. Shutting down the screen and going into lock mode extends your battery life and optionally allows you to protect your iPhone by requiring a passcode to use the device after it has been locked.

If it seems like your iPhone is locking too frequently, you can adjust how long it should wait before locking. Tap your way to Settings ➤ General ➤ Auto-Lock, and select how many minutes you want your iPhone to wait before going dark. Sometimes you may want to just power the iPhone off by yourself and disable autolocking. There’s a choice for that in the autolock settings, when you set the duration to Never. Make sure you have a good power source available at all times if you disable autolocking, since autolocking is a power-saving feature. Disabling it means your iPhone will use up battery power more rapidly.


Putting Your iPhone to Sleep
For iPhones, sleep mode offers a power-saving way to use your device. Press the Sleep/Wake button once. The screen turns off, and your iPhone locks and enters its lowpower mode. You can still listen to music and receive phone calls. The volume control buttons on the left side of your iPhone work, and the switch on your iPhone headset continues to control music playback and allows you to answer calls. Under iOS 4.0 on devices newer than the iPhone 3G, some apps can continue to run in the background even when the device is asleep. As an example, some location-aware apps continuously update the location of the iPhone although it is asleep. To wake up your iPhone again, press Home, and swipe to unlock.


Securing Your iPhone with a Passcode Lock
For security, you can assign a passcode lock for your iPhone. There are two types of passcodes: a simple passcode, which consists of four easily remembered and typed numbers, and a regular passcode, which can include text. When locked, your iPhone cannot be used except for emergency calls. Go to Settings ➤ General, and tap Passcode Lock to establish a new passcode. There’s a button that turns on the passcode lock feature. If a four-digit simple passcode is all you’d like to enter, make sure that the Simple Passcode switch is set to the default value of on. If you’d rather enter a text passcode, flip that switch to the off position.

Once you’ve decided what kind of passcode you want, tap Turn Passcode On to enter it. If you have chosen simple passcode, you’re prompted to enter four digits twice— once to enter the numbers and again to verify that you entered it correctly the first time. For regular passcodes, you’re prompted to enter your passcode with text, symbols, and numbers. Once again, you’ll have to enter the passcode twice to make sure that it has been entered properly.

As soon as you’ve set a passcode, you can change some other settings that are related to the passcode lock. Tap the Require Passcode button to set the time interval before your iPhone requests the passcode. Shorter times are more secure, although you’ll need to enter your passcode more frequently as a result.

If you like to use Voice Control and your iPhone or Bluetooth headset to do voice dialing or control the iPod app, slide the Voice Dial switch to on to make sure that Voice Control is always enabled, even when the phone is locked. This makes it handy for you to use a Bluetooth headset to dial and control your phone, even when it’s sitting in your pocket or in a briefcase or purse.

The final button on the Passcode Lock screen ensures absolute security in case your iPhone is lost or stolen. Sliding the Erase Data button to on will erase the contents of the iPhone if someone incorrectly enters the passcode ten times. Before you engage this setting, be sure that you know your password.

How can you test your passcode? Press the Sleep/Wake button once to put your iPhone to sleep, wait for the time interval to pass, and then wake the iPhone by either pressing the Sleep/Wake button again or pressing the Home button. A passcode challenge screen appears. Enter your passcode correctly, and your iPhone unlocks.

To remove the passcode from your iPhone, go back to the Passcode Lock screen. Tap the Turn Passcode Off button, and then reenter the passcode one more time to confirm that the rightful owner of the iPhone is making the request.

What can you do if you forget your passcode or a mean-spirited colleague adds one to your iPhone without telling you? Unfortunately, you will have to connect the iPhone to your computer and use iTunes to restore the iPhone to factory defaults. Why? Well, for security reasons, there’s absolutely no way to reset the passcode since that would defeat the purpose of the passcode.


Multitasking and Quitting Applications
Prior to iOS 4, iPhones could not perform more than one task at a time. Well, they could play music from the iPod app while performing some other tasks, but that was about it. iOS now acts more like a modern multitasking operating system by allowing multiple apps to run simultaneously. One example that many people pointed at as proof of the need for iOS multitasking was being able to play tunes using the popular Pandora music-streaming app while performing other tasks, such as reading e-mail, at the same time.

When you’re using an app, pressing the Home button returns you to the Home screen, but the app is either suspended or may actually be running. In fact, if the app has been written to take advantage of back grounding, it will continue to run when you’re viewing the Home screen or running other apps. In other words, don’t assume that when an app is out of sight, it’s shut down.

To see what’s currently running on your iPhone under iOS 4, double-click the Home button. The current Home screen becomes transparent, and a side-scrolling list of active apps appears at the bottom of the screen.

Flicking the active apps to the right, you’ll eventually get to a control panel for whatever music app happens to be active at the time. This control panel is equipped with play, pause, fast-forward, and fast-reverse buttons, as well as a screen orientation lock button. The far-right icon on the control panel shows which music app you’re currently controlling.

On an iPhone 3G or 3GS running iOS4, having multiple apps still running in background can increase usage of the processor to the point that your iPhone heats up, the device uses much more power, and the response of the phone becomes sluggish. Even with the iPhone 4’s powerful and fast Apple A4 processor, too many apps running simultaneously can slow things down dramatically. Idle applications occupy your iPhone’s memory, which may eventually cause it to balk when you try to open another app.

So, how do you quit apps? Double-click the Home button, and at the bottom of the iPhone display you’ll see a side-scrolling list of all the apps that are currently running. To turn off an app, tap and hold an app icon in the list until it begins to jiggle. A small minus sign in a red circle appears at the top-left corner of the icon. Tap the minus sign to quit the application.


Powering Your iPhone Off and On
To power off your iPhone, press and hold the Sleep/Wake button for about five seconds. A slider appears prompting you to slide the red button that appears to the right in order to power off. To cancel, either tap Cancel or just wait about ten seconds. The iPhone automatically returns you to the Home screen if you don’t power down within that time. When your iPhone is powered off, it ceases to function. You cannot listen to music. You cannot receive phone calls. You must power your iPhone back on for it to do these things.

To power on your iPhone, press and hold Sleep/Wake for two to three seconds. Release the button when you see the white Apple icon. The iPhone starts up and returns you automatically to the unlock screen.


Rebooting Your iPhone
At times, you may need to reboot your iPhone. The most common reason for doing this is that you have installed a new app that recommends a reboot after installation. Although you can reboot just by powering down and then powering back up, Apple provides a much easier way do this. Press and hold both the Home and Sleep/Wake buttons for eight to ten seconds. Ignore the “slide to power off” message, and keep holding both buttons until the white Apple logo appears. Once it shows up, release both buttons, and let the iPhone finish its reboot. You will return automatically to the unlock screen.


Placing Your iPhone into Recovery Mode
On occasion, you might encounter one of these odd symptoms:
» Your iPhone continually restarts but never displays the Home screen.

» An update or restore did not complete, and the device is no longer recognized in iTunes.

» The iPhone stops responding, displaying the Apple logo with no progress bar or a stopped progress bar for more than ten minutes.

If this happens to you, you can place the iPhone into recovery mode and attempt to restore it. Here’s how to put your iPhone into recovery mode:

1. Disconnect the USB cable from your iPhone, but leave the other end connected to the USB port on your computer.

2. Turn off your iPhone. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until the red slider appears, and then slide it to the right. Wait for the iPhone to turn off. If you can’t turn off the iPhone using the slider, press and hold the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons at the same time. When the iPhone finally turns off, release the buttons.

3. While pressing and holding the Home button, reconnect the USB cable to your iPhone. When you reconnect the USB cable, the device should power on. If a depleted battery\ icon appears on the iPhone screen, let your iPhone charge for at least ten minutes and then start over again at step 2.

4. Hold the Home button down until you see the Connect to iTunes screen. It displays an iTunes icon (a music CD with musical notes in front of it) and a USB cable.

5. At this point, if iTunes isn’t running on your computer, launch it. You should see a “recovery mode” prompt in iTunes that says, “iTunes has detected an iPhone in recovery mode. You must restore this iPhone before it can be used with iTunes.” Click the OK button to begin using iTunes to restore the iPhone.

Source of Information :  Taking Your iPhone 4 to the Max

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The iPhone Sensors

In addition to the touchscreen, your iPhone contains either five or seven important sensors depending on the model. Both the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 contain a proximity sensor, an ambient light sensor, a tilt sensor (also known as an accelerometer), a digital compass, and a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver. The iPhone 4 also adds a built-in three-axis gyroscope and a noise-cancellation microphone to the array of sensors. These sensors give your iPhone some science-fiction-grade features that set it apart from the crowd.


Proximity Sensor
The proximity sensor is located on your iPhone right near the earpiece. Its job is to blank the screen when the iPhone is held up to your ear. This means your ear and chin won’t accidentally hang up your calls with their stray touches, and it means you’ll save some power during those phone calls.

You can see the proximity sensor in action by going to Phone ➤ Voicemail. Set Speaker to off (on is a brighter blue; off a dimmer blue), and then play a voicemail message by tapping the name or phone number of the person who left it. With the speaker off, place a finger just above the earpiece. The iPhone display goes dark. Remove the finger, and the screen returns.

Test the sensor range by placing your iPhone on a flat surface and holding your finger in the air about an inch above the earpiece. Move the finger up and down slightly, and you’ll discover exactly where the sensor gets triggered. The proximity sensor works by shooting out an infrared (IR) beam, which is reflected back and picked up by the iPhone’s light sensor. If the range is short enough, the iPhone switches off the screen.

You can also see the IR source for the proximity sensor by using a digital camera. The IR beam is visible to the camera’s CCD detector. To take the picture we switched off a camera’s flash, enabled its Macro settings (because we needed the camera to be pretty close to the iPhone), and waited for the source to flash red. You can’t see it with your eyes, but you can with your camera’s IR-sensitive detectors.


Tilt Sensor
The iPhone uses an accelerometer (what we’re going to call the tilt sensor) to detect when your iPhone tilts. Many apps, including Safari, update their displays when you turn the iPhone on its side. This allows you to use your iPhone in both portrait and landscape modes.

If you feel like playing with the tilt sensor, try this: go into Photos, and select a favorite picture. Hold the iPhone up normally in portrait orientation, press one finger onto the screen, and then tilt the phone into landscape orientation. The picture will not change. Now, lift the finger off the screen. Presto—the iPhone finally rotates the display.

Many iPhone games use the accelerometer for user interaction. For example, with the very popular Flick Fishing game, you “cast” a line out to catch fish by moving your hand and arm in the motion of casting. Many driving games let you use your iPhone as a steering wheel as your drive along a virtual course.


Ambient Light Sensor
The ambient light sensor detects whether you’re in bright or dark lighting conditions and then adjusts the overall brightness of your iPhone display to match. For example, if it’s extremely bright outside and you pull out your iPhone to make a call, the light sensor will judge the surrounding brightness when you unlock the phone and let the iPhone know that it needs to compensate by making the display brighter so you can read it. Going the other way, the screen will dim when you’re in a dark room to protect your eyes from the glare of a bright screen as well as save some battery power.

Want to have fun with this sensor? When you cover the sensor (found just above the ear speaker on the top front of the phone) with a finger and then unlock the phone, you’ll find that the screen brightness is quite dim. On the other hand, if you shine a bright light at the sensor when you unlock the iPhone, you’ll see the screen at a very bright setting.

You can toggle the auto brightness feature off and on in Settings ➤ Brightness. This setting also offers direct control over the brightness of the iPhone’s screen, which is handy when you need immediate results instead of playing with bright lights, fingers, and unlocking your iPhone.


Digital Compass
The digital compass (also known as a magnetometer) built into the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 is similar to a magnetic compass. In other words, if you happen to be near a strong magnetic field such as the magnets contained in the iPhone earbuds, the compass needle may not be pointing toward true or magnetic north. On occasion, the digital compass may need recalibrating.

The iPhone Compass app will inform you of those rare occasions by displaying a message that says “Re-calibrate compass. Wave in a figure 8 motion.” That’s your cue to hold the iPhone out in front of you and draw a big figure eight, with the eight lying on its side. Keep moving the iPhone until the calibration message disappears. Yes, you will look like a total geek while doing this, but it’s better than getting lost, right?

If you’re in a car and driving around, you don’t need to wave the iPhone at the windshield. Just make a few turns, and the compass will recalibrate itself. That’s much safer for everyone in and outside of your car.


GPS Receiver
Not only is your iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 an amazing, powerful pocket computer and a very capable phone, but it’s also a state-of-the-art navigation tool. Built inside the latest iPhones is a GPS receiver that is capable of pinpointing your exact location on the globe within about 30 feet (10 meters).

In fact, your iPhone has an advantage that many dedicated GPS receivers do not. Since it is constantly in touch with cell phone towers with precisely known locations, it can determine your approximate location within several seconds of being turned on. Once the iPhone has locked onto several GPS satellites, it pinpoints the location with even more accuracy. This capability of blending the GPS satellite signals and known cell tower locations is known as Assisted GPS (A-GPS).

The GPS receiver is used in most iPhone apps that contain some sort of geolocation feature. Some examples of these apps include Maps, the Navigon, Tom Tom, and AT&T navigation apps, and the official Geocaching (www.geocaching.com) app.

NOTE: The Global Positioning System consists of a constellation of 24 to 32 satellites in precisely known orbits about 12,550 miles above the earth’s surface, all equipped with extremely accurate clocks and powerful radio transmitters. GPS receivers determine their location by timing the reception of signals from four or more satellites and then performing a series of complex calculations.


Three-Axis Gyroscope
The iPhone 4 is the first mobile phone to contain a miniaturized three-axis gyroscope to determine the precise orientation of the phone at every moment. This is handy in gaming apps that may need to track the motion of the phone more accurately than the tilt sensors can and also in apps such as You Gotta See This! (www.boinx.com/seethis). The latter is an iPhone 4–specific app that creates photo collages simply by waving the phone around in front of you. The iPhone shoots photos as it is moving, and since the app knows the orientation of the iPhone’s camera as each photo is being taken, it can easily stitch them into an attractive collage in seconds.

The gyroscope can be used by iPhone developers to capture movement that isn’t sensed by the accelerometer. Although the accelerometer does a good job of detecting whether the iPhone has been tilted one way or another, the gyroscope allows the device to be moved left or right, up and down, or forward and back, and that motion can be understood by apps. These additional movements provide another layer of precise control to the gestures that the iPhone understands.


Noise Cancellation Microphone
A glance at the top of an iPhone 4 will show a tiny hole next to the headset jack. This hole is actually a microphone, given the name top microphone by Apple. What’s it used for? It’s for improving the quality of your voice phone calls.

The Noise Cancellation microphone samples the ambient noise level around you. It then subtracts much of that ambient noise from the signal being sent to the person on the receiving end of your phone call. The result is much more clarity when you’re making phone calls in noisy conditions.

Source of Information : Taking Your iPhone 4 to the Max

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Ethics and App reviews

Editorial ethics have been around as long as the published word, but that might not be obvious if you read iPhone App review sites. Unfortunately, there are some Web publishers (and reviewers) that put quick cash in front of the best interests of their readers by taking money for reviews. Selling out is the critic’s cardinal sin, and the growing tendency to do so is why we established the Organization for App Testing Standards (a.k.a., O.A.T.S.).

O.A.T.S. is a group of iPhone App review publications that came together to raise the journalistic bar for the emerging world of iPhone application and game review sites. From our initial base of four sites, we have grown to 35 publications that have promised to serve their readers first, last, and always. Joining is simple, and every English-language site is welcome—providing they take the following Oath:

WE, THE CONSTITUENT SITES OF THE ORGANIZATION OF APP TESTING STANDARDS, have gathered under the auspices of O.A.T.S. with a common goal: to improve the quality of iPhone games and app criticism. While we applaud the great diversity of opinion now available to consumers looking for iPhone app reviews, it is clear to us that not all of these sources have put the best interests of the readership first. We hope to combat this by holding ourselves to a higher standard.


TO THAT END:
1.) WE PLEDGE to never mix business with editorial. We reject all forms of paid reviews, including “express reviewing” fees. Advertising on an O.A.T.S. site will have no bearing whatsoever on whether we decide to review an app, or on the nature of coverage we give it, when and if we do;

2.) WE PLEDGE to clearly mark all advertisements as such on our sites;

3.) WE PLEDGE to ensure that each of our reviews is as thorough, accurate, honest, and fully informed as possible;

4.) WE PLEDGE to promptly correct all factual mistakes in our reviews and to post an Editor’s Note when we do;

5.) WE PLEDGE that all editorial work appearing on our sites is our own;

6.) WE PLEDGE to allow disagreement, dissent, and complaint through reader commentary, and to never censor it;

7.) WE PLEDGE that all app reviews will follow the same process, whether a particular app is obtained via promo code, purchase, or ad-hoc distribution;

8.) WE PLEDGE that site promotions or contests involving promo code giveaways will not influence reviews in any way.

Source of Information :  IPhone Life November-December 2010

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The 5 Best Apps for Business

These apps have the greatest potential to improve your business!

Apple has achieved 80 percent penetration of the FORTUNE 100 and has demonstrated that the iPhone can provide powerful capabilities to business. And as the iPad continues to gain momentum in the marketplace, it is being embraced faster and even more openly than the iPhone has been.

This collection of the best five business solutions highlights the apps that have demonstrated a strong capability to extend business information, data, and systems to information workers wherever they might be. As small businesses and larger enterprises continue to embrace the iOS platform, this application segment will continue its explosive growth and deliver even more powerful solutions to the mobile worker.



5 » Keynote (iPad)
$9.99, iPad only, app2.me/2481
Even though Keynote is more of a productivity app than business app, it is popular with road warriors everywhere, allowing them to create, view, import, and make presentations on the go. Keynote turns the iPad into an incredibly elegant presentation tool that can be connected to a projector or simply display a series of slides on the iPad itself. With instant on, Keynote transforms the iPad into a living, breathing presentation that allows you to simply forget about the technology and get down to business.



4 » Citrix Receiver (iPhone/iPad)
Free, iPhone/iPod touch version: app2.me/3024, iPad version: app2.me/3025
Citrix Receiver lets you access virtual desktops, applications, and data, giving you the ability to extend existing line-of-business applications to the iPhone and iPad. It’s a very simple and powerful solution that works very well with applications that are easily used with a touch screen and in environments where there are fast and reliable internet connections. This makes it a very good solution for many, but not all situations. Organizations should seriously evaluate it if their solutions can leverage Citrix, especially if the organization already has an investment in Citrix infrastructure.



3 » Cisco WebEx
Free, iPhone/iPod touch version: app2.me/3022, iPad version: app2.me/3023
WebEx has helped mobile workers bridge the distance between the conference room and remote work sites, allowing them to participate in meetings wherever they are. It transforms your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad into a mobile Web conferencing portal that lets you view shared content, chat, voice conference over VoIP, and more. It’s a powerful app, but it’s not perfect. We eagerly await the day that Cisco enhances this app to allow mobile users to lead meetings.



2 » Salesforce Mobile
Free, (requires a salesforce.com account), iPhone/iPod touch only, app2.me/3021
Salesforce.com mainstreamed cloud computing for large and small businesses, and the mobile companion to the Web-based service is fairly revolutionary in its own right. The app lets you access sales information stored in your salesforce.com account and provides significant and powerful out-of-the box functionality for accessing and editing CRM information. It also provides the ability to extend the application with your own custom data objects and functionality.



1 » Roambi Visualizer
Free, iPhone/iPod touch and the iPad versions, app2.me/2428
Businesses have been waiting for nearly a decade for a useful Mobile Business Intelligence solution, but it wasn’t until Roambi launched Visualizer for the iPhone that a powerful, usable, and beautiful one became available. The more recent iPad version gives business executives a taste of the iPad’s potential. Visualizer is a cloud-based solution that can be used by individual workers who need to visualize spreadsheets, data, and other corporate information as well as remain fully integrated into business solutions deployed by their organizations. If you want to know where your business is at wherever you are, Roambi Visualizer is the app for you.

Source of Information : IPhone Life November-December 2010

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iPhone Activation at the Store

If you purchase an iPhone at an Apple or cellular service provider store in the Apple Stores in the United States and many other countries, you’ll find that the activation process is taken care of in the store at the time you pay for the phone.

After you’ve made your choice as to the model of iPhone you want to purchase and have picked out accessories (cases, cables, and other goodies) to go with it, it’s time to pay for the goods. When the Apple Store associate scans the iPhone box with an iOSbased point-of-sale device, the device immediately starts asking questions that you’ll need to answer. Among those questions are the following:

» Are you a current customer of a particular mobile phone company that features the iPhone? If so, what is your telephone number?

» Are you coming over from another cell phone company? If so, what company, and what is your telephone number?

» What voice, data, and text plan would you like to sign up for?

» If you are not eligible for a phone upgrade on your existing plan, are you willing to pay the extra cost to buy the unsubsidized phone? (Many carriers subsidize the cost of the phone, knowing that you’ll more than pay them back in your monthly subscription fees.)

In the case of an existing iPhone owner upgrading to a newer iPhone, the point-of-sale device will check your existing phone number and will immediately let the Apple Store associate know whether you’re eligible for an upgrade. There’s usually a nominal fee associated with the upgrade, and you will be asked if you want to accept that fee. The associate will then display your existing voice, data, and text plans, and you’ll be asked if you want to stay with those plans or change to a different plan. Of course, you’ll also need to swipe the credit card that you’ll use to pay for the phone and the plan, and your signature is required on the point-of-sale device.

Upon agreement to the terms and conditions of the carrier’s plan and the use of Apple’s hardware and software, your new iPhone is activated. Note that if you have an existing phone, the service to it will be cut off immediately.

Activating your iPhone at an Apple or a carrier store has another benefit. Most of the stores have a set of cables and special software that are used to transfer all your settings, data, addresses, photos, and more from your existing phone to the iPhone. This is especially important if you are getting your first iPhone and coming over from another phone platform.

Regardless of whether you choose to pick up your new iPhone in person at an Apple or cellular service provider’s store or if you have it shipped to you from Apple or Amazon, you still won’t be able to use the phone (except to make emergency phone calls) until you connect it to your computer.

Source of Information : Taking Your iPhone 4 to the Max

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Buying iPhone Returns and Exchange Policies

The return policy for iPhones has improved since the release of the phone. If you’re not happy with your iPhone purchase, you can return the undamaged phone to an Apple Store or the Apple Online Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund. You must return the phone in the original packaging, including all the accessories, manuals, and documentation, and you won’t be charged a restocking fee.

If your iPhone is returned to Apple within 30 days from the date of purchase (or shipment in the case of a purchase from the Apple Online Store), your wireless service is canceled automatically, and you are not charged an early termination fee (ETF). However, you will be charged for all usage fees; prorated access charges, taxes, and surcharges; and any other fees your carrier may charge.

If you purchased your iPhone at a cellular carrier store, things aren’t as rosy. A restocking fee will generally be applied to the return, unless you purchased it without service and the phone box was never opened.

In the United States, at the where AT&T is the only carrier available for iPhone owners at the, getting out of a standard two-year postpaid contract (meaning that you are billed at the end of each month of use) can be expensive. You can cancel the service within 30 days of activation without being charged for an ETF. After 30 days, the ETF is $325 minus $10 for each full month of your service commitment that you complete. For example, if you cancel your AT&T contract after 12 months, the ETF is $325 – (12 x $10) = $205. Canceling 23 months into a contract, you’d still be charged a $95 ETF. Once you’ve fulfilled the two-year agreement, your service switches to a month-to-month automatic renewal.

If you opt for a nonstandard, no-contract, month-by-month plan, you pay only for the months you use, and there are no early termination fees. Your credit card is charged in advance for each month of use, and you must contact AT&T before the monthly charge date when you want to cancel. Otherwise, you will have paid for an extra month of service that you will not use.

Source of Information : Taking Your iPhone 4 to the Max 

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What about an iPhone or iPad?

Apple’s mobile devices are designed to sync perfectly with your Mac

Both the iPhone and iPad have a touch screen, come with email and web-browsing applications and are capable of running third party apps that you can get from Apple’s App Store. But the iPad isn’t simply a bigger iPhone. The iPhone is first and foremost a phone, and like all mobile phones, unless you buy it on Pay as You Go (which makes the device itself much more expensive) you’re going to be tied into a phone contract.

If you want all the features of the iPhone but without the phone part, then consider getting an iPod touch instead. If you’re looking for a phone then you’ll find the iPhone is designed to cover all your data needs while you’re on the go, and fits in your pocket.

In contrast, the iPad is a device that sits somewhere between an iPhone and a Mac. It also comes with a 3G data contract option, but that doesn’t include phone calls. The only phone calls you can make with it will be digitally, using VoIP apps, such as Skype. While a lot of people find the iPhone perfectly acceptable for home use, if you just need to check your email or do a quick bit of web surfing, the iPad is positively designed to be used from your sofa. It has built-in Wi-Fi, which means you can check emails and browse the web on your wireless network at home. Here it would fulfill most functions of a laptop, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking of the iPad as a replacement for a home computer. It’s fundamentally designed to be an accessory. You’re meant to keep your data on your Mac and sync your iPad with it, not the other way around.

It does have some big advantages over a Mac laptop, though. For a start, because it uses solid-state memory it’s pretty-much instant on. There’s no waiting around for it to boot up. It’s also lightweight, extremely portable and the perfect size to be used as an eBook reader.

The iPhone currently comes in two versions, the 3GS and iPhone 4. The latest model, the iPhone 4, features a stunning new 960x640 high-resolution display, making it much easier to read on-screen text. The screen itself is now IPS (in plane switching) for great viewing angles. However you hold it, the colors won’t shift. There’s also a front-facing camera for video chat and HD video recording using the rear camera.

The iPad comes in three capacities, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB, and is available in Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi + 3G versions. The 3G version costs £100 more initially and comes with data plans from either O2, Orange or Vodafone. Prices start at £429 for the 16GB Wi-Fi version, and go up to £699 for the top-of-the range 64GB Wi-Fi + 3G iPad.

“The iPad sits between an iPhone and a Mac. If you just need to check your email or do a quick bit of web surfing, the iPad is ideal”

Source of Information : Mac Format November 2010 (UK)

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