Tips & Tricks For iPhone And iPad – May 2013 (Part 2)

Tips for experienced users

Use Siri's onscreen guide

Siri can work wonders, but is fairly useless if you aren't aware of its capabilities. If you want to explore Siri's full range of com­mands and see a list of possible ques­tions to ask it, simply pull up the on­screen guide. Press and hold the home button until Siri pops up, and tap on the tiny "i" to the right of the dialog box. The "i" stands for Information, and it will show you a long list of Siri-capable commands and features.

Siri can work wonders, but is fairly useless if you aren't aware of its capabilities

Raise to speak to Siri

Another way to ac­tivate Siri is to raise your iPhone to your ear, wait for the double beep, and speak your com­mand. To enable this feature, go to Settings>General>Siri, and slide Raise to Speak to the On position (this feature isn't available on the iPad).

Another way to ac­tivate Siri is to raise your iPhone to your ear, wait for the double beep, and speak your com­mand.

Do you want Siri to talk back?

If you often wear a headset, you may want Siri to speak back its responses to you in addition to showing them on the screen. You can choose to have Siri give you voice feedback all the time, or only when you're wearing a headset. To set your preference, open Settings>General>Siri>Voice Feedback and tap one of the two options.

Make a lightning-fast restaurant reservation

The upgrade to iOS 6 gave Siri some won­derful new features, one of which is its ability to make super­fast restaurant reservations. Ask Siri, "Can I make a restaurant reservation for 7 p.m. tonight?" Siri will respond by ask­ing which restaurant you'd like to make reservations for and showing you a list of nearby restaurants with open reservations for that time. Tap on the restaurant you want to go to, and you're all set!

The upgrade to iOS 6 gave Siri some won­derful new features, one of which is its ability to make super­fast restaurant reservations.

Make an emergency call

Did you know that you can make emergency calls without unlock­ing your iPhone? When you swipe to unlock the phone and the passcode prompt pops up, tap on the bottom left button that says Emergency Call. The dialing pad will appear, and you'll be able to call 911 (or your country's equivalent emergency number).

Did you know that you can make emergency calls without unlock­ing your iPhone?

Make FaceTime calls

You can make FaceTime video calls to anyone with a Mac or an iPhone that supports Face­Time if you have an iPhone 3GS or later. If you're using an iPhone 3GS or 4, you need to be connected to a Wi-Fi network in order to make FaceTime calls. For users with an iPhone 4S or 5, FaceTime calls are available over the cellular data network. To make a FaceTime call, open Contacts, tap on the name of the person you wish to call, scroll down, and tap on FaceTime. You can also use Siri to start a FaceTime call by saying "FaceTime [name of contact]."

Make FaceTime calls

Group email threads

To keep your email in­box more organized, you can choose to group related messag­es together in threads. To do this, open Settings>Mail, Con­tacts, and Calendars, and swipe Orga­nize by Thread to the On position.

Edit photos and video on the fly

By virtue of owning an iPhone, you've prob­ably already become an amateur photographer. In addition to being able to take pictures whenever you want to, you can also do minor photo and video editing at any time.

Open an image in the Photos app, and tap on Edit. You'll see a new set of options along the bottom of the screen, which you can use to rotate, enhance, crop the image, or remove red eyes.

As far as video editing, you can only trim the size of a video. When you open a video, you'll see two trim bars above the video along the left and right edges that you can grab in order to shorten the clip to a more suitable size.

What's taking up so much space?

If you're starting to run out of space, but don't know what's hogging your pre­cious memory, you can take a peek at where the trouble lies by opening Settings>General>Usage. There you'll get a snapshot of how much memory you have left, in addition to what apps are taking up most of the space. Don't be afraid to delete a sizeable app; you can always re-download it from the Purchased section of the App Store.