iPhone: FaceTime Tricks and tips

Facetime is a nice feature of the iPhone 4 and perhaps all of us are quite fond of it. Well, here are some little tricks for you to get the most out of Facetime chat.

Facetime: Video Calls now with more fun

FaceTime has been quite popular among iPhone users for its free and high-quality iPhone –to-iPhone video calls. Though there’s the catch that you need to have good signal strength in a Wi-Fi zone to prevent call dropping, Facetime had been quite popular.

So, we thought of sharing some tricks with you that can spice it up further.

The default mode of FaceTime screen in portrait, now just try by rotating the phone by 90 degrees—you can have your image turned into landscape mode. The one you are calling will see your image turning suddenly. Nice, isn’t it? J Well, by rotating the receiver set in the same way, he or she can get it back right obviously.

Here’s another funny aspect for you. You can even show your family or friends on FaceTime what you are actually seeing at that time. Got confused? Well, we are talking about the camera-switch option from your FaceTime. While on FaceTime chat you can tap on the Camera-Rotation icon from your screen, switching from the default front to the rear camera. With the rear camera in action, even the person you are calling can see what you are seeing in front of you.

You can also do a quick bit of stuff just by changing to another program or even simply tapping the Home button. Well, while the audio contact remains on, the video screen goes black and you can do a bit of work before going back to the call. In the meantime a Green banner would pop-up and stay on the top of the Home Screen to remind you of the ongoing Call.

iPhone tips: It’s not only for ‘dummies’

We have already discussed some tips to maximize your iPhone’s usage, now we are back again with some more.

iPhone abruptly hang-ups? Just try out rebooting

One of my friends was complaining the other day—his iPhone ‘hangs-up’ and he just not could not get it working. What would you have done? Well, the better way is to try the On/Off button or  by pressing down your Home button for more than six seconds. From my experience, I can say it works on 99% cases—it ‘quits’ any locked up application on your iPhone.

Now if your problem still persists, keep your On/Off and Home button pressed for around 10 seconds. This would reboot the iPhone and you can view the Apple logo which the iPhone is booting up.

Now sync iPhone Notes with MAC: Notes on the go

Truly speaking this is a stumbling block in iPhone’s ‘Notes’ – you can’t synchronize the Notes you have in your iPhone with those on your Mac. But we have figured a way around syncing your notes.  You can create a pseudo-contact and copy-paste the important notes in the ‘notes’ field of that fake contact. So, what you have is a pseudo-contact added to your Address Book with all your important notes and hence moving on the go.

iPhone: Alternative calling from Safari and more

Rather than scrolling down to a contact number and dialing—you can even call from your Safari. It’s simple—you need to find the phone number in Safari and just tap it—and bingo; iPhone will call up in no time.

Also, you can now time-up when to receive your voicemails. When you are not using a Bluetooth headset (that routes the calls instantaneously when plugged in)—you can use the Audio button of the Voicemail screen to time-up the messages. This enables you to hear those messages only when you desire.

iPhone: Some more tips for you

We have already shared some handy tips for your iPhone. Here’s some more for you—to squeeze out the maximum from your iPhone.

Time to manage e-mails better

Now you can send e-mails from your iPhone and you can have absolute control over your emails. It happens sometimes—you try to send an email but your network is down. So, your mail doesn’t get delivered and it’s even not in your ‘Sent Items’ folder. So, where is it? Do you have to type it again? Oh! Certainly not—it gets stored in a temporary outgoing folder on the device itself. You don’t have to do anything—whenever the network is back it gets delivered.

Many a time we have read an email and then want to mark it as unread—for the simple reason it’s so important that upon logging in again you will want to read that one first. Marking read mails as unread is quite simple—while viewing the message just tap the Details; you will have ‘Mark as unread’ option. Click that one and next time on logging in onto your inbox the same message will show as unread.

Just like your PC, you can also Save messages as drafts and can later work on it. In iPhone it’s a bit different to what we are used to on desktops—after you finished your typing, just tap Cancel. You will be prompted to a dialog box with three options—Save, Cancel and Don’t Save. As soon as you tap save, the half-finished mail gets saved into the Drafts folder which you can later retrieve and complete.

The iPhone doesn’t have anything like email folders physically, but there’s one you can see on your device. Wondering how? Well, IMAP email accounts produce a shadow folder on IMAP server—though the folder appears on the device; the contents of your device gets synced with the server.

Want to know what more your iPhone can do? Keep checking out here for more info.

iPhone: Some cool tips that may come handy

iPhone Tips: Get the most out of your Safari

Bigger Keyboard means better browsing experience, right? Well, the generic keyboard of the iPhone is OK, but perhaps a bigger keyboard is much better. So, what you have to do is simple—rotate the iPhone horizontally and tap the address bar. You will have the Safari in horizontal view with the keyboard appearing horizontally. What’s better is this keyboard’s size is much bigger than what we are accustomed with.—making data entry and long text typing much convenient. But if you open up the keyboard before turning the iPhone—this won’t work.

A friend of mine was telling me that he was having trouble with reading all the forum posts of a particular site, because whenever he tries to scroll down a dialog box; the whole page scrolls down. I tried out myself and the solution is simple—you just have to click and zoom in the box and then scroll.

Perhaps we all know that while surfing if we hold on a particular link without tapping, a balloon appears giving you intricate details of the links where clicking will redirect you. On the iPhone Safari, you can even do the same on your emails. This is excellent for security parameters, because you can be somewhat cautious before clicking some obnoxious malware link that somewhat had got into your email.

So, find these little tips useful? Well, there’s much more coming.

iPhone going to Mainland China? Maybe soon

Apple Inc. is in talks with China Mobile to take the next iPhone to mainland China, thanks to a next-gen Qualcomm chip in the iPhones compatible with China Mobile’s innate 3G technology.

Telecom Giant China Mobile to go Apple way! At last

You may be thinking; what took China Mobile so long to bring in the iPhones? Well, the main problem for the World’s biggest telecom service provider is technical constraints of their indigenous 3G technology.

China Mobile which already boasts of the largest customer base in the world is in talks with Apple to bring in the iPhone to the Dragon country. According to latest news, Xi Guohua, Chairman China Mobile had confirmed to the shareholders that they are ‘actively cooperating’ with Apple Inc to make the collaboration possible. Though he declined to divulge further details, this can be looked upon as an effort to compete against the rivals—China Telecom and China Unicom who have already struck  deals with Apple earlier.

Reports further suggests that China Mobile is looking to venture to Hong Kong with 4G services—which could be the first instance China Mobile would be going outside mainland China.

China Mobile going International

Are we going to have another Chinese International Giant? Maybe , as China Mobile Chairman Xi made their intentions pretty clear in a recent interview. He confirmed that they have already for license to operate in United States and are hoping to have the clearances soon. The Chinese giant already having a customer base of 667 million is looking to try out with LTE mobile network with 850 BTS all over China by as early as June 2013.

Though only time can tell if iPhone gets into mainland; China Mobile is certainly having a great run at the Hang Seng Index—their stocks are already up by 13% compared to last year.

iPhone 5: ‘Gifting’ for special occasions

In an earlier article, we talked about the NFC chip and its implications in controlling financial transactions on the next iPhone. As it turns out, NFC chips are capable of doing a lot more—Apple will be offering customers a chance to send and receive digital gifts via iTunes.

Gifting: Digital gifts over iTunes

Downloading and sharing audio and video over the internet is quite in vogue these days—but there’s the copyright law issue. A lot of digital distributors are binding up the usage and distribution of audio/video files these days, so what you have is those copyright protected medias become unplayable when transferred to a second media.

The solution to this, in the Apple way—‘Gifting’. It’s going to be a unique platform, where you buy and present music and video contents to your beloved ones. The better part; it’s not only limited to iPhones; but also available on iPod Touch and iPad over the iTunes.

Gifting through iTunes: Simple enough

Guys, the gifting is easy enough. If you are sending say, an audio file , as soon as you authorize the gift charge on your iTunes account—it gets transmitted via the NFC chip to the designated user’s device. As the receiver has to confirm the receipt over NFC, the copyright issues and illegal distribution is not at all an issue.

You may be thinking, well, my fiancée is away and I want to give her a track as a surprise gift! Then, you can submit a request with iTunes, which will be processed backend and the receiver will receive a specific encrypted gift file. Also, file transfer can be done between two remote iDevices by sending and confirming emails alongside customized voice and image greetings.

Simple, isn’t it?

iPhone latest features: ‘iWallet’ and LTE Connectivity

Apple have won the major ‘iWallet’ patent this March 6^th, LTE connnectivity on the iPhone 5!

iWallet: Using NFC to control your accounts

On 6^th March, Apple won the patent for an intelligent technology named the ‘iWallet.’ The best part of the technology is that it will empower you to simultaneously control all your iPhone subsidiary financial accounts. You can do all your credit card transactions through your iPhone itself, making use of an inbuilt Near Field Communication (NFC) chip. Not only that, you can keep yourself updated about the payments you are making– via the statements from iTunes billing systems. If you are worried about security issues, you need not be—the digital encryption confirms every transaction you are making to be safe and secure. As per reports, ‘iWallet’ will also have a ‘Parental Control’ option—to make use of the features in a restricted manner; much like a digital wallet.

LTE Connectivity in iPhone 5: A surety

Going by the positive feedback Apple received from the latest iPad, implementation of 4G LTE connectivity is almost a surety. Owing to LTE’s superior download and upload speeds over conventional 3G networks, Apple is certainly looking forward to integrate this onto the next iPhone 5, possibly a Qualcomm next generation chip. Perhaps when you are reading this article; Apple techs are busy working out ways to increase battery life in the future LTE iPhone 5.

Awesome Sneak Peaks of iPhone 5 (3D Images)

Today, we’ve got some really excellent models of the iPhone 5 that have been drawn up.  This is exactly how we imagine the iPhone 5 will look and given that several parts have been leaked, it seems like they match this quite well and it is highly likely the iPhone will be almost exactly the same as these models.

Looks pretty sharp in our opinion.  As you can see, the screen is just a tad longer, bringing the display to about 4″ with a full 16×9 view for movies.  Additionally, there is the new smaller dock port on the bottom, next to the headphone port which has been relocated from the top of the iPhone to the bottom.  Other than that it looks pretty similar to the last model of iPhone with the exception of the metal back as opposed to the previous glass backing (which tended to crack).

Overall, we’re pretty excited!

Hands on with Leaked iPhone 5 Parts (Video)

We got it!  A hands on Video of the iPhone 5 Frame!  The parts have been leaked and we are fairly confident that this is the actual iPhone 5 that will be released.  While This video does not contain the LCD screen, it is fairly easy to image how it would look.  Almost exactly the same as the iPhone 4/4S but with a slightly taller screen.  We have also heard word that the Front-facing camera will now be centered above the earpiece on the phone.

So to round up the details that are gone over in the video, it looks like we have a new, smaller dock connector, the headphone plugin has been moved to the bottom of the iPhone, the sim card tray is smaller, the iPhone is about half an inch taller, and it is made as one solid piece now (as opposed to the iPhone 4/4s which had two pieces for the midframe and back).

Pretty cool stuff we got here.  It is definitely going to be a clean looking phone, with a new, albeit slightly, form factor.

Check out the video below!

Enjoy!

(Via ETrade Supple)

Not All iPhone Cases Are Created Equal

The best way to cover up your precious iPhone, useful, protective, beautiful.

1.Pico Genie A100

All the tech heads I know are far more excited about projector technology over TV technology. Please step forward, the Pico Genie. This is an iPhone case, yes, but it also has a built in pico projector, extended battery and external speakers for your iPhone. Project your favorite movies, photos, anything on your iPhone onto an available wall and have yourself your own little cinema experience. Amazing. Seemingly only available for sale in the UK for the moment, you can order it online for around $392

2.Opena Case

The worlds first iPhone case with a slide out bottle opener. Get in. As their slogan says, ‘How about a beer with your iPhone?’ Uh, yes please? Free standard shipping, available in black or white. $39.95

3. Griffin Survivor Extreme Duty

This is if you are not only the ultimate clutz, but everyone around you is too. This case passed military endurance testing ( tested to meet or exceed US Department of Defense MIL-STD-810 and UK Department of Defense Def-Stan 00-35 through an independent testing procedure). This is some secure stuff. Drop your iPhone, throw it against a wall, leave it in the rain, sandstorm, duststorm, stamp on it in frustration- this case will protect it. $49.9

4.Knucklecase

Rihanna has one. Enough? No? This is an iPhone case that has a knuckleduster attached. To keep it attached to your fingers, mind. And look badass. Silver and shiny and pretty in a totally awesome way. $99.00

5. Proporta Amphibian iPhone Case

Lucky enough to be scuba diving? Snorkeling, in a pool? This is for you. Go on, make us all jealous. You can make and receive calls and take photos underwater, and it’s not some weird baggy thing, it’s a case. The Proporta Amphibian makes your iPhone 100% guaranteed waterproof to 3 metres (9 feet) underwater. $33.00

Honourable Mentions: There are two honourable mentions, for both being amazing technology, but also for not being available quite yet. The Nissan Scratch Shield and Magnifi. One is very useful and very cool, the other is very, very cool, but perhaps only useful to so many iPhone users.

The Nissan Scratch shield is a protective, self-healing iphone case. Nissan says that a small graze can heal within an hour while deeper cuts could take up to a week to fix. What?? The case is not on the market yet- but will be on sale in North America very soon.

Magnifi is another kickstarter project and is the world’s first universal photoadapter case for the iPhone. It connects the camera on your iPhone to your favorite optical instrument, allowing you to take pictures and video through the eyepiece. This includes binoculars, microscopes, telescopes and almost anything else with an eyepiece. Available soon.