iPhone Basics

One of the great things about the iPhone is that its headphones come with a handy little microphone with an integrated button. The button of course allows you to answer and end calls, as well as play and pause your music. You've also been able to double-click them to skip to the next song, but in iPhone 3.0 you can actually triple-click to rewind and go back to the previous track! It's a little tough to do at first, but it's a handy little addition that's sure to help out with your daily iPhone use. Enjoy!

Everyone knows that iPhone's keyboard comes with a full set of QWERTY keys, numbers, and punctuation, but you may not have realized that there's even more. Hidden underneath many of the keys are special character variations. To bring up a special character, simply tap and hold for a moment and select from the pop-up menu. For example, if you'd like to type café, simply type caf, hold E, and choose É from the menu.

There are tons of other special characters hidden behind both alphabetical keys and punctuation keys. Check 'em out!

The swipe to delete gesture is one of the most often used on the iPhone, but sometimes swiping to delete many emails can take time. With iPhone 2.0 Apple expanded Mail's "Edit" button to allow selection of multiple emails for deletion. You can also use this multiple selection mode to move emails to a specific folder. Just hit the "Edit" button! It's a basic feature, but it's one that everyone can use.

In the latest iPhone software update (v2.2), Apple added a new shortcut to the Home button. Pressing the Home button from any Home screen will now bring you right back to your first home screen. This shortcut is great for those of you who just can't stop downloading apps.

For this one to work, you must already be at the Home screen.

If a call comes in and you want to mute your ringer, pressing the Sleep/Wake button or one of the volume buttons will immediately silence your phone. If you'd like to send a call directly to voicemail, you can press the Sleep/Wake button twice to decline it. You can also do this if you're wearing an iPhone headset by quickly pressing the microphone button twice.

Now you can selectively ignore people you don't want to talk to. Handy!