2. Using Your iPhone’s Core Features

In Chapter 1, “Getting Started with Your iPhone,” you learned how to interact with your iPhone including using apps, locking and unlocking it, swiping to open and close things, and zooming in or out. In this chapter, you learn to use some of the iPhone’s “core” features, meaning those that apply across multiple apps and functions of your iPhone. For example, an Internet connection is required by many, and used by most, of the apps on your iPhone. As another example, you’ll be typing or speaking text in many different situations from emails to messages to searches, so it’s fundamental to know how to work with text on your iPhone. Getting comfortable with these core features helps you do the many other things you can do with your iPhone that you learn about throughout the rest of this book.

Wi-Fi networks are available just about everywhere you go, including homes, offices, hotels, restaurants, and other locations. Fortunately, it’s very easy to connect your iPhone to the Wi-Fi networks you encounter. (And, if there isn’t a Wi-Fi network available, your iPhone uses its cellular data network to connect to the Internet, which is covered later in this chapter.)

Almost all Wi-Fi networks broadcast their information so that you can easily see them with your iPhone; these are called open networks because anyone who is in range can attempt to join one because they appear on Wi-Fi devices automatically. The Wi-Fi networks you can see on your iPhone in public places (such as airports and hotels) are all open. Likewise, any Wi-Fi networks in your home or office are very likely to be open as well. To connect your iPhone to an open network, you tap its name and then enter its password (if required).

Your iPhone remembers Wi-Fi networks you’ve connected to previously and joins one of them automatically when available; these are called known networks. For example, if you have a Wi-Fi network at home and another in your office, when you change locations, your iPhone automatically changes Wi-Fi networks.

If your iPhone can’t connect to a known network, it automatically searches for other Wi-Fi networks to join. If one or more are available, a prompt appears showing the networks available to your iPhone. You can select and join one of these networks by tapping its name on the list of networks and entering its password (if one is required, you need to obtain it from the source of the network, such as a hotel or restaurant).

If no Wi-Fi networks are available or you choose not to connect to one, your iPhone automatically switches to its cellular data connection (covered in “Connecting to the Internet Using Cellular Data Networks” later in this chapter).

When you connect to one of these public networks, you’re prompted to provide whatever information is required. This can involve different details for different networks, but the general steps are the same. You’re prompted to provide whatever information required. Then, follow the instructions that appear.

However, this automatic prompting for networks can be as annoying as it is helpful. It is helpful in that your iPhone prompts you when it comes into range of a network it doesn’t know, which can make it easier to know when a network is available to you. It can be annoying when you are moving around a lot because what you are doing can be frequently interrupted by the prompt, even if you don’t want to connect to one of the available networks. For example, when you walk through an airport, the prompt can appear multiple times as you move between networks.

The provider for your iPhone also provides a cellular data connection your iPhone uses to connect to the Internet automatically when you aren’t using a Wi-Fi network (such as when you are in a location that doesn’t have one). (Your iPhone tries to connect to an available Wi-Fi network before connecting to a cellular data connection, because Wi-Fi is typically less expensive and faster to use.) These cellular networks cover large geographic areas and the connection to them is automatic; your iPhone chooses and connects to the best cellular network currently available. Access to these networks is part of your monthly account fee; you choose from among various amounts of data per month for different monthly fees.

Most providers have multiple cellular data networks, such as a low-speed network that is available widely and one or more higher-speed networks that have a more limited coverage area. Your iPhone chooses the best connection available automatically.

The cellular data networks you can use are determined based on your provider, your data plan, the model of iPhone you are using, and your location within your provider’s networks or the roaming networks available, when you are outside of your provider’s coverage area. The iPhone automatically uses the fastest connection available to it at any given time (assuming you haven’t disabled that option, as explained later).

In the United States, the major iPhone providers are AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint. There are also other smaller providers, such as Virgin Mobile. All these companies offer high-speed Long Term Evolution (LTE) cellular networks (these are also referred to as true 4G networks) along with the slower 4G and 3G networks. In other locations, the names and speeds of the networks available might be different.

The following information is focused on LTE networks because I happen to live in the United States and use AT&T as my cell phone provider. If you use another provider, you are able to access your provider’s networks similarly, though your details might be different. For example, the icon on the Home screen reflects the name of your provider’s network, which might or might not be LTE.

LTE high-speed wireless networks provide very fast Internet access from many locations. (Note: LTE networks might not be available everywhere, but you can usually access them near populated areas.) To connect to the LTE network, you don’t need to do anything. If you aren’t connected to a Wi-Fi network, you haven’t turned off LTE, and your iPhone isn’t in Airplane mode, the iPhone automatically connects to an LTE network when available. When you are connected to the LTE network, you see the LTE indicator at the top of the iPhone’s screen. If you can’t access the LTE network, such as when you aren’t in its coverage area, the iPhone automatically connects to the next fastest network available, such as 4G. If that isn’t available, it connects to the next fastest and so on until it finds a network to which it can connect if there is one available. If it can’t connect to any network, you see No Service instead of a network’s name; this indicates that you currently can’t connect to any network, and so you aren’t able to access the Internet.

One thing you do need to keep in mind when using a cellular network is that your account might include a limited amount of data per month. When your data use exceeds this limit, you might be charged overage fees, which can be very expensive. Most providers send you warning texts or emails as your data use approaches your plan’s limit, at which point you need to be careful about what you do while using the cellular data network to avoid an overage fee. Some tasks, such as watching YouTube videos or downloading large movie files, can chew up a lot of data very quickly and should be saved for when you are on a Wi-Fi network to avoid exceeding your plan’s monthly data allowance. Other tasks, such as using email, typically don’t use very much.

When you move outside your primary network’s geographic coverage area, you are in roaming territory, which means a different provider might provide cellular phone or data access, or both. The iPhone automatically selects a roaming provider, if there is only one available, or allows you to choose one, if there is more than one available.

When you are outside of your primary provider’s coverage area, roaming charges can be associated with calls or data use. These charges are often very expensive. The roaming charges associated with phone calls are easier to manage, because it’s more obvious when you make or receive a phone call in a roaming area. However, data roaming charges are much more insidious, especially if Push functionality (where emails and other updates are pushed to your iPhone from the server automatically) is active. And when you use some applications, such as Maps to navigate, you don’t really know how much data is involved. Because data roaming charges are harder to notice, the iPhone is configured by default to prevent data roaming. When data roaming is disabled, the iPhone is unable to access the Internet when you are outside of your cellular network, unless you connect to a Wi-Fi network. (You can still use the cellular roaming network for telephone calls.)

You can configure some aspects of how your cellular network is used, as the following task demonstrates. You can also allow individual apps to use, or prevent them from using, your cellular data network. This is especially important when your data plan has a monthly limit.

In most cases, the first time you launch an app, you’re prompted to allow or prevent it from using cellular data. At any time, you can use the Cellular Data options in the Settings app to enable or disable an app’s access to your cellular data network.

The options you have for configuring how your iPhone uses its cellular data connection depend on the provider your iPhone is connected to and the model of iPhone you use. For example, if you live in the United States and use Sprint as your cellular provider, the Cellular screens in the Settings app look a bit different than the figures in this section (which are based on AT&T’s service). Regardless of the specific options you see on your phone, the basic purpose is the same, which is to configure how your iPhone uses its high-speed network and to enable and disable roaming.

To type, just tap the keys. As you tap each key, you hear audio feedback (you can disable this sound if you want to) and the key you tapped pops up in a magnified view on the screen. The keyboard includes all the standard keys, plus a few for special uses. To change from letters to numbers and special characters, just tap the 123 key. Tap the #+= key to see more special characters. Tap the 123 key to move back to the numbers and special characters or the ABC key to return to letters. The keyboard also has contextual keys that appear when you need them. For example, when you enter a website address, the .com key appears so you can enter these four characters with a single tap.

By default, two keyboards are available for you to use. One is for the primary language configured for your iPhone (for example, mine is U.S. English). The other is the Emoji keyboard (more on this shortly). How you change the keyboard you are using depends on whether you have installed additional keyboards and the orientation of the iPhone.

If you haven’t installed additional keyboards, you can change keyboards by tapping the Emoji key, which has a smiley face on it.

If you have installed other keyboards, you change keyboards by tapping the Globe key.

Each time you tap this key (Globe if available, Emoji if there isn’t a Globe), the keyboard changes to be the next keyboard installed; along with the available keys changing, you briefly see the name of the current keyboard in the Space bar. When you have cycled through all the keyboards, you return to the one where you started.

You can also select the specific keyboard you want to use and access keyboard and text options by touching and holding on the Globe key (or the Emoji key, if you don’t see the Globe key). The Keyboard menu appears. Tap a keyboard to switch to it. Tap Keyboard Settings to jump to the Keyboards screen in the Settings app where you can configure keyboards and enable or disable text options (these settings are covered in Chapter 4).

Because you often type on your iPhone while you are moving around, it has a one-handed keyboard. This keyboard “squishes” all the keys to the left or right side of the screen to suit typing with a thumb. To use a one-handed keyboard, tap and hold the Globe or Emoji key to open the keyboard menu (this only works when the iPhone is held vertically). Tap the left or right keyboard; the keyboard compresses toward the side you selected and you can more easily tap its keys with one thumb. To return to the full-screen keyboard, tap the right- or left-facing arrow that appears in the “empty” space on the side of the screen not being used for the keyboard or open the Keyboard menu and tap the full-screen keyboard.

The Predictive text feature also suggests emojis when you type certain words; just tap the emoji to replace the word with it.

If Predictive Text is enabled, potential replacements for suspicious words appear in the Predictive Text bar. When you tap the space key, the suspicious word is replaced with the word in the center of the Predictive Text bar. Tap the word on the far left to keep what you’ve typed (because it isn’t a mistake) or tap the word on the right end of the bar to enter it instead of what you’ve typed.

If Predictive Text isn’t enabled, a suspicious word is highlighted and a suggestion about what it thinks is the correct word appears in a pop-up box. To accept the suggestion, tap the space key. To reject the suggestion, tap the pop-up box to close it and keep what you typed. You can also use this feature for shorthand typing. For example, to type “I’ve” you can simply type “Ive” and iPhone suggests “I’ve,” which you can accept by tapping the space key.

By default, the iPhone attempts to correct the capitalization of what you type. It also automatically selects the Shift key when you start a new sentence, start a new paragraph, or in other places where its best guess is that you need a capital letter. If you don’t want to enter a capital character, simply tap the Shift key before you type. You can enable the Caps Lock key by tapping the Shift key twice. When the key is highlighted (the upward-facing arrow is black), everything you type is in uppercase letters.

You see markers indicating where the selection starts and stops. (The iPhone attempts to select something logical, such as the word or sentence.) New commands appear on the menu; these provide actions for the text currently selected.

Drag the two markers so that the content you want to select is between them; the selected portion is highlighted in blue. As you drag, you see a magnified view of where the selection marker is, which helps you place it more accurately. When the selection markers are located correctly, lift your finger from the screen. (If you tapped the Select All command, you don’t need to do this because the content you want is already selected.)

Tap Cut to remove the content from the current window, or tap Copy to just copy it.

Move to where you want to paste the content you selected; for example, use the App Switcher to change to a different app. Tap where you want the content to be pasted. For a more precise location, tap and hold and then use the magnifying glass icon to move to a specific location. Lift your finger off the screen and the menu appears. Then tap Paste.

The content you copied or cut appears where you placed the cursor.

Tap the underlined word. It is shaded in red to show you what is being checked, and a menu appears with one or more replacements that might be the correct spelling. If one of the options is the one you want, tap it. The incorrect word is replaced with the one you tapped.

To start dictating, tap the Microphone key. The iPhone goes into Dictation mode. A gray bar appears at the bottom of the window. As the iPhone “hears” you, the line oscillates.

Start speaking the text you want the iPhone to type. As you speak, the text is entered starting from the location of the cursor. Speak punctuation when you want to enter it. For example, when you reach the end of a sentence, say “period,” or to enter a colon say “colon.” To start a new paragraph, say “new paragraph.”

When you’ve finished dictating, tap the keyboard icon. The keyboard reappears and you see the text you spoke. This feature is amazingly accurate and can be a much faster and more convenient way to enter text than typing it.

You can edit the text you dictated just like text you typed using the keyboard.

Use the drawing tool to create the drawing. Tap Add (+) to add shapes, lines, or text. Tap text to edit it. Tap Signature to sign your name. You can tap objects to select them to move or change them. You can use the format tools (color and font) to format objects. When you’re done, tap Done. Then tap Insert Drawing to place the drawing where the cursor was located.

When you move back to the text, you see the drawing you created. You can then complete what you were doing, such as finishing and sending an email message.

You can open the Widget Center in a number of ways:

• Wake your iPhone and swipe to the right on the Lock screen.

• Move to a Home page and swipe to the right.

• Swipe down the screen to open the Notification Center and then swipe to the right.

At the top of the Widget Center, you see the Search tool (more on this later). If you open the Widget Center from the Lock screen, you see the current time and date under the Search tool; if you open it from a Home screen, you don’t see the date or time. Beneath that, you see widgets for apps installed on your iPhone. Swipe up and down the screen to browse your widgets.

Each widget provides information or functions based on its app. For example, you can use the FAVORITES widget to place phone calls using the Phone app or to make FaceTime calls to your contacts you’ve designated as Favorites (you learn how to do this in Chapter 7). You can see your daily calendar in the CALENDAR widget, get news in the NEWS widget, or listen to music in the MUSIC widget.

You can expand a widget to show all of its information or tools by tapping the Show More command or collapse it to a more minimal state by tapping the Show Less command.

You can interact with widgets in several ways. Some widgets provide information that you can view within the widget, such as CALENDAR, STOCKS, or UP NEXT. Some apps provide options you can tap to perform specific actions; these include FAVORITES and MUSIC. When you tap something within a widget, the associated app opens and either performs the task you indicated or shows more information about what you selected.

Some apps even have multiple widgets. For example, the Calendar app has the UP NEXT widget that shows you the next events on your calendar and the CALENDAR widget that shows the events on the current date.

If you don’t move into an app from a widget, you can close the Widget Center by swiping to the left. You move back to the screen you came from, such as a Home screen. If you do move into an app from a widget, you work with that app just as if you moved into it from a Home screen.

There are a couple of ways you can start a search:

• Swipe to the right to open the Widget Center. The Search bar is at the top of the screen.

• On a Home screen, swipe down from the center of the screen. The Search bar appears at the top of the screen.

To perform a search, tap in the Search bar and type the search term using the onscreen keyboard. As you type, recent or suggested searches appear just below the Search bar; tap a search to perform it. Under the search list, you see the current items that match your search. If you don’t tap one of the recent or suggested searches, when you finish typing the search term, tap Search to see the full list of results.

The results are organized into sections, such as CONTACTS, MAIL, MESSAGES, APPLICATIONS, MAPS, MUSIC, and so on. Swipe up and down the screen to browse all of the results. To work with an item you find, such as to view a location you found, tap it; you move to a screen showing more information or into the associated app and see the search result that you tapped.

The results remain in the Search tool as you work with them. To move back to the search results, tap the back icon in the upper-left corner of the screen or tap Search (which you see depends on the result you tapped on).

The results of the most recent search are still listed. To clear the search term, tap Clear (x). To close the Spotlight tool without going to one of the results, tap Cancel.

To access Siri Suggestions, swipe down from the center of a Home screen. Just under the Search bar, you see the SIRI APP SUGGESTIONS panel. This panel shows you apps you’ve used recently or apps that might be useful to you based on your location. For example, the Starbucks app may be suggested when you are near a Starbucks location. Tap an app to open it.

Siri Suggestions can also appear in other apps. Siri monitors your activity and “learns” from what you do in order to improve the suggestions it makes. These suggestions can appear in many different places, such as when you are entering email addresses in a new email, dealing with new contact information, performing searches, editing a text message, and so on. When you see a list of Siri Suggestions, you can tap the suggestion you want to use. For example, if it is an email address, that address is entered for you. If it is a search, the search is performed.

You can enable or disable the apps and services that Siri can access to make these suggestions; the information to do this is provided in Chapter 11, “Working with Siri.” For example, if you don’t want Siri to be able to make suggestions based on a specific app, you can disable the Search & Siri Suggestions setting for that app.

You can determine which types of notifications are used for specific activity on your iPhone. This might be one of the most important areas to configure because you want to make sure you are aware of activity that is important to you, but too many notifications can be disruptive and annoying. So, you want to strike a good balance between being aware and being annoyed.

Badges appear on an app’s or a folder’s icon to let you know something has changed, such as when you have received new email.

Badges are purely informational, meaning you can’t take any action on these directly as you can with the other visual notifications. They inform you about an event so that you can take action, such as to download and install an update to your iPhone’s iOS software or read new text messages.

Banner notifications provide information for you, and you can take action related to the event that generated the notification. For example, you can respond to a text message directly from its notification.

There are two types of banner notifications. Persistent banner notifications remain on the screen until you take action on them, which can be closing them, responding to them, etc. Temporary banner notifications appear on the screen for a few seconds and if you don’t take action on them, they rotate off the screen to get out of your way.

When your iPhone is unlocked, banner notifications appear at the top of the screen. They provide a summary of the app and the activity that has taken place, such as a new email or text message. When a banner appears, you can view its information; if it is a temporary banner, it rotates off the screen after displaying for a few seconds; if it is a persistent banner, you need to do something to cause it to disappear. You can tap it to move into the app to take some action, such as to read an email. You can swipe up from the bottom of the banner to close it. For some apps, such as Email, you can press on the notification to open a menu of commands.

Banner notifications can also appear on the Lock screen, which is really convenient because you can read and take action on them directly from that screen. If your phone is asleep, the notifications appear briefly on the screen and then it goes dark again; you can press the Side button or the Touch/ID Home button or raise your phone to see your notifications without unlocking the iPhone. You can swipe up or down the screen to browse the notifications.

To respond to a notification or take other action on it, press it to open it (3D Touch iPhones) or swipe to the right on it (non-3D Touch iPhones) and then take action, such as replying to a message. In some cases, you might need to unlock your phone to complete an action associated with a notification. In those cases, you’re prompted to use Touch ID, Face ID, or your passcode to proceed.

If don’t want the banners to appear, you can disable them.

Vibrations are a physical indicator that something has happened. Like sounds, you can configure general vibrations, and you can also configure an app’s vibration pattern for its notifications.

First, set up and configure your AirPrint printer (see the instructions that came with the printer you use).

When you are in the app from which you want to print, tap the Share icon. Tap Print on the resulting menu. You might need to swipe to the right to expose the Print command. (If you don’t see the Share icon or the Print command, the app you are using doesn’t support printing.)

The first time you print, you need to select the printer you want to use. On the Printer Options screen, tap Select Printer. Then tap the printer you want to use. You move back to the Printer Options screen and see the printer you selected.

Tap the – or + to set the number of copies; the current number of copies is shown to the left of the controls. You can use other controls that appear to configure the print job, such as the Black & White switch to print in black and white on a color printer; the controls you see depend on the capabilities of the printer you selected. Tap Print to print the document.

The next time you print, if you want to use the same printer, you can skip the printer selection process because the iPhone remembers the last printer you used. To change the printer, tap Printer and tap the printer you want to use.