iPhone Tips and Tricks

Punctuation/Keyboard Tips

hit the space bar twice, you get a period.
Remember that the iPhone does not register a key press until you release your finger from the screen. With that in mind, you can quickly get any punctuation mark by doing the following, all in one motion: Touch the “.?123” key, but don’t lift your finger as the punctuation layout appears then slide your finger a half inch onto the period or comma key, and release. The ABC layout returns automatically. You’ve typed a period or a comma or any of the punctuation symbols with one finger.
To type all in Caps, use the CAPS LOCK feature, make sure it is enabled in the General Settings. To use it, simply double-tap on the shift key. The shift key will turn blue.
If you are writing something and the iPhone flags a word as misspelled that you know is not misspelled, cancel the correction 3 times and the word will be put into the dictionary.

Double- Tapping

In Photos, Google Maps, and Safari (the Web browser), double-tapping zooms in on whatever you tap, magnifying it by a factor of two.
In the same programs, as well as Mail, double-tapping means, “restore to original size” after you’ve zoomed in. (Weirdly, in Google Maps, you use a different gesture to zoom out: tap once with two fingers. That gesture appears nowhere else on the iPhone.)
When you’re watching a video, double-tapping eliminates or restores letterbox bars.
If you double tap a video while it is playing, you will magnify the image so that it fills the entire screen.

Headset "Clicker"

Pinch once to answer an incoming phone call.
Pinch for a couple seconds to dump the call to voicemail. (You can also double-tap the Sleep/Wake switch on top of the iPhone to send the call to voicemail.)
During music or video playback, pinch once to pause the music; pinch again to resume playback.
During music playback, double-pinch to skip to the next song.
If you aren't using iPod at all and want some music, you can start up iPod mode with a double-squeeze then a single squeeze to start the music playing. It will automatically start playing the first song in your Songs list, and work it's way through.

Customizing the iPod Buttons

In the iPod tap the More button, and then tap the Edit button (upper-left corner). Drag an icon from the top half of the screen downward, directly onto the existing icon you want to replace. It lights up to show the success of your drag. When you release your finger, you’ll see that the new icon has replaced the old one. Tap Done in the upper-right corner.

Misc.

The iPhone will automatically capitalize the first letter of a new sentence, so don't bother doing it yourself.
Don’t put apostrophes in contractions - iPhone will do it automatically.
If you have multiple apps open like Safari, iPod, Youtube, stocks etc., when you press Home it does NOT actually clear or close apps., and this may affect battery usage. To actually close (or Quit) an application, HOLD the Home button for about 4-8 seconds while in the application.

Reset

Press and hold the Home button for six seconds to force-quit a program that seems to be stuck.
If the entire iPhone locks up press and hold both the Home button and the Sleep/Wake switch for eight seconds. The screen go black, and then the Apple logo appears as the iPhone reboots.

Phone

To stop an incoming call from ringing, press the sleep / wake button. To send the call immediately to VoiceMail, press the sleep / wake button twice.
If you select a photo for a contact from the iPhone, the selected photo is shown full screen for the caller ID.
If a contacts photo is transferred with the contact's info from the Address Book, the contact's photo is shown as a thumbnail for the caller ID.
Keeping the favorites screen open allows you to unlock the screen then dial with three motions.
The home button can be used to access unlocking instead of sleep wake.

Email

To delete email by just swiping left to right on the email in the list and press the delete button that pops up on the right.
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.

Google Maps

Typing in the three letter airport code while in maps will bring the airport up on the map. So if you are trying to view a map of central NJ, Typing EWR will bring up the Newark airport. It's relatively quick to zoom out, recenter over New York, and zoom in again. It seems to recognize all primary and secondary US airports and many overseas airports as well. Here's a Link to find airport codes.
Tapping on the address in your contacts opens it up in Google maps.
You can send yourself a link (via email) to a map from Google Maps online - when you click on that link it will open in Google Maps (not Safari). If you have a bunch of locations you want to save send email links and save them in an email folder.

Safari

When you've scrolled down to the bottom of a page, and you want to go back to the top- just tap on the top bar of the phone (where "AT&T" and the time are) and the page jumps right back up to the beginning.
If you want to scroll inside text area form fields and scrollable areas in a page, use two fingers to scroll.
To email a page to someone tap on the address bar. The Share button on the top left will create a message for you.
Page down. When not using a zoomed-in display, double-tap towards the bottom of the screen. The page will re-center around your tap.
Zoom onto a single picture. Double-tapping images in Safari zooms them to fit your iPhone display. If the picture is linked to a URL, this can prove a little tricky but it works great for non-linked images. Double-tap again to return to the unzoomed display.
Zoom a column. You can zoom text columns as well as pictures. Double-tap on the column to fit it to the display. Double-tap again to return out of the zoom. Not only does Safari zoom block-quoted text independently of regular text but if you move your finger after the first double-tap-to-fit, it interprets the next double-tap as a re-center page command rather than a return-to-previous-zoom.
Stopping a scroll. After flicking a page to get it to scroll, you can tap the page at any time to stop that movement. Don't forget, you can also manually drag the screen display to reset the part you're viewing.
Manual zoom. To zoom into a Safari page, put your thumb and forefinger on the screen and move them apart. To zoom out, pinch the fingers together after starting with them apart.
Examining the URL. To peek at a link's destination, touch and hold the link for a few seconds. You can also do this with images to see if they are linked. If a link appears and you don't want to activate it, just slide your finger away until the destination text disappears.
Google Videos. Point your iPhone browser to a video on google video and choose download for iPod/PSP and you can watch it right there in safari.
Bookmarks: Create a separate folder / section for all your iPhone web sites. This makes is easy to locate them while browsing the we on your iPhone.
RSS. If your favorite 'news' sites offer an RSS feed, bookmark and use that on your iPhone (I have an "all RSS" bookmark folder to collect them). This can make browsing, even while on EDGE much faster.
You can get on the internet during a call! You can only do this if your connected to a WIFI network (it wont work via edge), just hit the home key and click on Safari. Now your surfing while talking! The person on the other end can't hear the keyboard clicks either!

Address Book

Create several subgroups, this can speed up the location of a contact given the lack of an actual search function.

Notes Hack

Since the Notes cannot be manipulated on the desktop (yet), you can hack your way aound this to have notes that can be modified on your desktop: (1) create a new address book group called 'Notes'; (2) create a dummy address and give it company name "Notes" (3) populate the "Note" field of this contact entry with plain text This will now sync between multiple Macs/PCs and always be available on iPhone, even when it is offline. Simply look in the address group Notes for these items - not ideal but it works

Clock

When the alarm wakes you up in the morning, touching the sleep/wake button will "snooze" and sliding the wake up slider will turn off the alarm.

Camera

To get better picture, press and hold the shutter button. As long as you are holding the button, you can set up the picture. When you release the button, the picture will be taken.

Stocks

If you touch the green/red boxes outlining the +/- movement of the stocks, it changes to displaying the %.

Weather

Click on the yahoo link on the bottom left and safari will launch into Yahoo city guide.

iPhoto (Mac Application)

The phone shows up in iPhoto by default. To disable this, turn off in image capture
You can use 'Camera is not Apple iPhone' in a smart playlist
A contacts picture folder /album is a good idea
A wallpaper folder / album is a good idea - Create an Album (folder) called iPhone Wallpaper and load up your favorite 320x480 wallpapers. This makes it very easy to pick a new wallpaper on your iPhone.