(Last Updated: March 1, 2009)

In this section, we will share with you the best kept secrets to help you get more out of your iPhone. We will start with a few tips and tricks now, but we will continue to add to it regularly. So check back often!

  1. Use Wi-Fi in Airplane Mode
  2. Capture the screen of your iPhone
  3. Quick access with Home Button shortcut
  4. Type faster by activating hidden keys
  5. Put your iPhone to sleep
  6. Stop iPhone from auto-rotating 
  7. Automatically add apostrophes
  8. Quickly get back to Safari’s address bar
  9. Connect your computer online via your iphone
  10. See site name and URL of a link before clicking

 

Tips & Tricks #1: Use Wi-Fi in Airplane ModeIMG_0006

Ever go to another country, and you don’t want to receive calls or have data transfer over the cellular network to avoid roaming charges? Then you can turn on Airplane Mode, but still use Wi-Fi to check email or surf the web.

  1. Go to Settings, and turn ON Airplane Mode.
  2. Tap on Wi-Fi, and connect to the right access point.

 

Tips & Tricks #2: Capture the screen of your iPhone

You are all familiar with Print Screen on your Windows desktop, right? Did you know you can do the same thing on your iPhone?

  1. Press and hold the lock/unlock button on the top right of your iPhone.
  2. Press and release the Home button (this is the round button at the center bottom of your iPhone).

You should see a white flash on the screen. The image you captured is now in your Camera Roll.

 

Tips & Tricks #3: Quick access with Home Button shortcut

You can press your Home Button twice to quickly access your iPod or your Favorites Contacts list. You can change this behavior by going to Settings > General > Home Button.

IMG_0003

Tips & Tricks #4: Type faster by activating hidden keys

We love the “.com” button on the Safari keyboard when entering URLs. Did you know, you can press and hold the .com button to get other options such as “.net”, “.org”, “.edu”, and more? The same trick works for some characters if you need to quickly enter the accented version of that character. Simply press and hold the button for a second, and the accented characters will show up.

IMG_0001    IMG_0004 

Tips & Tricks #5: Put your iPod (the one in your iPhone) to sleepIMG_0005

If you like falling asleep while listening to music, this tip is perfect for you. The Clock application on the iPhone doesn’t only tell time. You can also use its timer feature to sleep stop music from playing.

  1. Go to the Clock application.
  2. Tap Timer at the bottom of the Tab Bar.
  3. Tap “When Timer Ends >”, and choose “Sleep iPod”. Tap “Set” on the top right.
  4. Then, just use the scroll wheels to set the time to when you wan your iPod to sleep.

 

 

Tips & Tricks #6: Stop iPhone from auto-rotating

If you like to read stuff in landscape mode on your iPhone while lying on your side in bed, this tip is for you.

  1. Turn iPhone perpendicular to the ground so that it goes into landscape mode.
  2. Then turn iPhone upside down so that the Home button is on top of the ear piece as shown in the picture below.

iphone_no_rotate Your iPhone will not rotate, so now you can enjoy landscape mode while lying in bed!

Tips & Tricks #7: Automatically add apostrophes

The iPhone automatically corrects some of your spelling and add apostrophes for you already whenever it can. For example, “wont” will turn into “won’t” and “cant” will turn into “can’t”.

But in some cases, it cannot disambiguate whether you really want it to insert an apostrophe. Some examples are “were” (we’re), “hell” (he’ll), “shell” (she’ll), etc.

You can make iPhone automatically add the apostrophe by adding an extra at the end, so “welll” will automatically turn into “we’ll” and “helll” will turn into “he’ll”. This trick works in any iPhone app and not only in the Notes application.

autocorrect1  autocorrect2

 

Tips & Tricks #8: Quickly get back to Safari’s address bar

Have you ever been in Safari scrolling down a long web page, then want to quickly go back to the address bar to enter a new URL or do a search? You don’t need to keep flicking on the screen to go back up. Simply tap the top of the screen where the clock is and Safari will immediately jump back to the top for you.

iPhone-tip-8 

Of course, this tip works for iPod Touch’s Safari too!

 

Tips & Tricks #9: Connect your computer online via your iphone

Remember we said one of our wishes for the iPhone is data tethering? The iPhone doesn’t officially support it, but if you have a jailbroken iPhone, this can be done *very easily*. This works for both 1st Gen iPhone as well as iPhone 3G.

Data tethering is just fancy technical term that means use your iPhone’s data connectivity to get your computer online. Let’s say you are at a coffee shop where they don’t have free WiFi and you are too cheap to pay for it (after all, that’s why you haven’t donated any money to skratchboard.com) You can connect your laptop to your iPhone via WiFi, and use your iPhone’s data connectivity through the cellular network to go online on your laptop. We tried it, and it’s easy.

Step 1: Make Sure Your iPhone is JailBroken

First, you need to jailbreak your iPhone. If your iPhone is already jailbroken, go to the next step.

If you don’t have a jailbroken iPhone already, then you can jailbreak it by following one of the guides here. Be careful if you are not familiar with what you are doing as you may brick your iPhone.

Step 2: Download PdaNet via CydiaCydia

Now, assuming your iPhone is jailbroken, you should go download PdaNet through Cydia on your iPhone.

Cydia is kind of like your underground apps store. Here, you will find lots of “underground” apps that Apple does not officially allow users to run. Just search for PdaNet and install it. PdaNetSearch

After you install it, you will see the PdaNet icon on your home screen.

PdaNet

If you start PdaNet now, it won’t quite work yet.

Step 3: Create an Ad-hoc Wireless Network on Your Computer

Assuming you are using Windows XP:

  1. Go to Control Panel > Network Connections.
  2. Right-click Wireless Network Connection and choose Properties.
  3. Select the Wireless Networks tab and click Add…
  4. Enter the network name, and set the Network Authentication to Open and Data Encryption field to WEP. Choose a Network key of your choice. Make sure you check the checkbox that says “This is a computer-to-computer (ad hoc) network…” at the bottom.

AdhocNetwork

If you are using Vista, Win7 or a Mac, I assume you are knowledgeable enough to do this on your own ;-)

Step 4: Connect Your iPhone to the Ad-hoc Wireless Network

On your iPhone, go to your WiFi settings. You need to connect to the network that you created in Step 3. If you followed the steps exactly as in the picture, you would connect to “MyHomeNetwork”. Enter whatever network key you entered.

Step 5: Start PdaNet on Your iPhone

We are almost there! Go back to your iPhone’s home screen and start PdaNet! It will take a few seconds to connect, and voila! You will see your computer connected to it and data being transferred (I blocked out my computer name below). Go back to your computer and try going online!

PdaNetConnect

T-Mobile T-Zone Users Only

If you have an unlocked iPhone and you are using T-Mobile’s T-Zone $5.99 plan to connect to the Internet, you will need to make sure you set your APN to epc.tmobile.com. Your APN settings is deep under Settings > General > Network > Cellular Data Network.

TMo-APN

 

Tips & Tricks #10: See site name and URL before clicking

Here is a quick tip for both iPhone and iPod Touch users. When you are in Safari and you see a hyperlink that you want to click on, often it is a good idea to see what the link actually is before clicking on it to make sure it’s not a phishing link for example.iphone_safari You can do this by just tapping and holding on the link. A balloon will come up to show you the site name and URL that the link points to, as shown above.

If you like these tips and tricks, share it with your friends! If you have other tips and tricks that you would like to share, please add a comment below!

- J.