iPhone All-in-One For Dummies. Hutsko Joe
the only app that helps you stay fit. The App Store boasts dozens of apps that create workout routines or track your progress toward fitness goals and work in conjunction with Health. In Bonus Chapter 5, which you find online, we tell you about a few of our favorite fitness apps. For more on this book’s online content, see the Introduction.
Figure 1-2: The Health app helps you stay, well, healthy.
Pocket video game console
With all the ruckus, you might think Candy Crush Saga is the only game in town. Actually, the App Store boasts more than 100,000 games, and many are free. Take that, Nintendo DS! With iPhone, you have a video game console with you at all times. The popular game Words With Friends is shown in Figure 1-3, and with Game Center, you can play against friends online and see who has the highest score. We tell you about Game Center in Book IV, Chapter 5.
Figure 1-3: Your iPhone is also a tiny game console.
Systemwide functions
The keyboard, used in any app where typing is involved, supports 50 languages. Siri can initiate phone calls, control Music, tell you what time it is, and more. Accessibility settings like enlarged font sizes, grayscale, custom vibration signals for incoming calls, and spoken text make iPhone easier to use. Guided Access helps those with learning disabilities stay focused on one task.
Notifications, such as text messages, Facebook status updates, reminders, and voicemails come in while you’re doing other things; you can respond by tapping the notification, regardless of what app you’re using. Just swipe down the screen and you see your upcoming appointments, stock activity, and the weather forecast along with a list of notifications. You choose to which and when you want to respond.
Swipe up from the bottom of the screen and you open the Control Center, as shown in Figure 1-4. Turn Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on or off, activate Do Not Disturb, adjust brightness and volume, and shine a light on your path with the flashlight – all just a tap away.
Figure 1-4: The Control Center gives you instant access to often-used system controls.
iCloud syncs your contacts, calendars, notes, browser tabs, photos, and documents across Apple and third-party apps on all your devices, including Mac and Windows computers, and you can store your files in iCloud Drive. With iCloud Keychain, AutoFill information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card information for secure access to your favorite websites and shopping haunts is shared across all your iCloud-enabled devices.
If you want to find something, Spotlight searches the contents of your phone from within many of the apps on your iPhone.
And a thousand other things!
Even if you never add another app to your iPhone, it can do a lot, but adding third-party apps moves the potential even higher. In the bonus chapters on this book’s companion website, we try to knock your socks off by introducing some of the newest and most innovative problem-solving apps available. The online minibook is divided into six chapters ranging from practical business solutions and creativity tools to apps for sports, cooking, and travel. (For more on how to access the companion website, see this book’s Introduction.) We certainly found apps we never imagined existed when we were researching them for this book, and we hope this nudges you to do some research on your own. Figure 1-5 shows one of Barbara’s favorites, StarWalk.
We also include a chapter on hardware you can add to your iPhone, such as protective cases, supports and stands, speakers, and more.
With that, dear reader, you should have some idea of where you want to go.
Figure 1-5: StarWalk is a location-based astronomy guide.
Chapter 2
Activating and Understanding Your iPhone
In This Chapter
▶ Activating your iPhone
▶ Turning iPhone on and off
▶ Adjusting the volume
▶ Charging the battery
▶ Interpreting screen communications
▶ Making connections
▶ Adjusting Accessibility options for easier operation
Are you itching to get started with all things iPhone? In this chapter, we tell you how to use your iPhone’s hardware and understand the interface. We begin with the most obvious tasks: turning your iPhone on and off, adjusting the volume level, and charging the battery. Then we review the basic layout of iPhone’s screen and define the Status bar icons, notifications, and badges. We explain different types of connections you make with your iPhone – Internet and network connections, GPS connections, and printer connections. At the end of the chapter, we take a look at some of the ways you can modify your iPhone to make it easier to use if you have vision, hearing, or tactile challenges or if a young person who uses your iPhone has learning disabilities.
Activating Your iPhone
To make phone calls and send SMS text messages, your iPhone must be connected to a cellular network through your cellular service provider. You can purchase an iPhone with a cellular network contract or without a contract, which is called an unlocked iPhone – not to be confused with the Unlocked/Wake mode, which we explain in the next section.
Here’s the difference:
✔ Contract: iPhone is activated when you sign up for a service plan with an iPhone service. There are several cellular network carrier choices. The most common that offer contracts are AT&T, which uses the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) cellular communications protocol, and Verizon and Sprint, which use the CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) cellular communications protocol. We explain both GSM and CDMA in the “Making Connections” section of this chapter. You register your phone with the network and pick a plan for the calling, text messages, and Internet service usage you want.
If you bought your iPhone with a cellular service contract, it was already activated when you bought it; you only need to turn your iPhone on and follow the onscreen instructions. You can skip ahead to the section “Turning iPhone On and Off.”
✔ Unlocked: You purchase a SIM card (that’s the little chip inside that gives you access to the cellular network) from a service provider. The provider needs to know which iPhone model you have in order to give you the correct SIM: iPhone 5 or later requires a nano-SIM, while iPhone 4s uses a micro-SIM. You then purchase prepaid calling minutes in a pay-as-you-go option or monthly plan that automatically renews until you cancel it, which you can do at any time. Cellular broadband Internet access may be sold separately or bundled with the calling and text message allotment. You can sign up for a contract even if you have an unlocked iPhone; in that case, you bought your iPhone outright so the monthly charge should cost less than iPhone plus a cellular service fee. Unlocked iPhones work only with carriers who use the GSM cellular communications standard. AT&T and T-Mobile are the most common in the United States, but there are others, which you can find by searching “no contract cellphones” or “prepaid cellphones” on the Internet.
If you bought an unlocked iPhone and then signed up for a renewable or contractual cellular service, you need to install the SIM card and