What are some undocumented iPhone features?

Question

With included documentation as sparse as Apple's, there are plenty of them...

Answer 1

When using the keyboard, if you tap the 123 button, and slide your finger (without lifting it) to any number or punctuation symbol, when you lift your finger the keyboard will return to the alphabetic keyboard automatically. One less tap!

Answer 2

Clicking the home button and power button will capture your screen and put it on your Photo Albums

Answer 3

Really, really hidden features that will only appear if you chant the correct spells:

Dial :

*3001#12345# *

to bring up the spirit of iPhone's Field Test mode (this is different from the DFU mode familair to jailbreakers), which will give you information about towers and signal strength, 3G/EDGE network and much more info which no mortal would ever need.

*#06#

will display your IMEI. No need to tap Call.

And some spells that only works in AT&T land:

*777# and tap Call. Account balance for prepaid iPhone.

*225# and tap Call. Bill Balance. (Postpaid only)

*646# and tap Call. Check minutes. (Postpaid only)

And a few more enchantments related to call forwarding :

*#21# and tap Call. Setting interrogation for call forwards.

Discover the settings for your call forwarding. You'll see whether you have voice, data, fax, sms, sync, async, packet access, and pad access call forwarding enabled or disabled.

And lots and lots of other spells for all occassions, phew...

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*#30# and tap Call.

Calling line presentation check.

This displays whether you have enabled or disabled the presentation of the calling line, presumably the number of the party placing the call.

*#76# and tap Call.

Check whether the connected line presentation is enabled or not.

State whether the connected line presentation is enabled or disabled. Presumably similar to the calling line presentation.

*#43# and tap Call.

Determine if call waiting is enabled.

Displays call waiting status for voice, data, fax, sms, sync data, async data, packet access and pad access. Each item is either enabled or disabled.

*#61# and tap Call.

Check the number for unanswered calls.

Show the number for voice call forwarding when a call is unanswered. Also show the options for data, fax, sms, sync, async, packet access and pad access.

*#62# and tap Call.

Check the number for call forwarding if no service is available.

Just like the previous, except for no-service rather than no-answer situations.

*#67# and tap Call.

Check the number for call forwarding when the iPhone is busy.

And again, but for when the iPhone is busy.

*#33# and tap Call.

Check for call control bars.

Check all the usual suspects (voice, data, fax, sms, etc) to see whether barring is enabled or disabled for outgoing.

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originally submitted by GeneQ on Super User.

Answer 4

Special characters on the keyboard.

• Hold down E, Y, U, I, O, A, S, L, Z, C, or N to bring up accented letters
• Hold down $ in the number/symbol keyboard to display other currency symbols
• Hold down “ or ‘ in the number/symbol keyboard to access alternative quote characters
• Hold down ? or ! in the number/symbol keyboard to bring up the ¿ or ¡ symbol
• Hold down the .com key when entering Web addresses to bring up options for .net, .edu and .org. (You can also do this trick when entering email addresses in Mail by tapping and holding the . (period) key.)

(from http://mac.elated.com/2009/01/05/15-secret-iphone-tips-and-tricks/ )

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originally submitted by Herb Caudill on Super User.

Answer 5

Scenario: You are trying to take a picture of yourself (and perhaps a friend), so you have the phone turned around, and you cant seem to hit the "shutter" button to take a picture.

Tip: Hold your finger on the "shutter" button, turn the phone around, and when you are ready to take a picture remove your finger. The picture will be taken when you remove your finger. This is much easier than the "old" approach.

Answer 6

Tapping the status bar will almost always bring you to the top of the scroll view.

Answer 7

Go to Settings->General->Keyboard, and turn on Enable Caps Lock. When typing the shift key will still behave as before, but now you will have the option to double-tap it to turn on Caps-Lock (shift key will turn blue). Useful for acronyms, and shouting.

originally submitted by jwaddell on Super User.

Answer 8

Double tapping the space key ends a sentence by filling in a period.

originally submitted by Sathya on Super User.

Answer 9

Since the screen is multitouch, you can hold the Shift key while typing other keys to type them in uppercase (just like a real keyboard).

Answer 10

If you hold your finger down on a link in Safari then you can open the linked page in a new "tab".

originally submitted by John Topley on Super User.

Answer 11

You can play videos even when the phone is locked.

Sometimes I listen to video podcasts, where all I am interested in is the audio. When doing this, if you lock the phone the podcast stops playing.

However, you can start the podcast playing again even with the phone locked. Just double press the home key to bring up the iPod controls and then press play.

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originally submitted by andynormancx on Super User.

Answer 12

Everyone knows about pinch to zoom in/out on Google Maps. Many people know that they can double-tap to zoom in. Did you know that you can do two-finger-tap to zoom out? So useful when driving with iPhone mounted on dash.

Answer 13

Since the 3GS, you can use the headphones remote button to stop/start video recording

Answer 14

Double clicking the home button in iOS4 shows a custom task bar with your recently used and still running multi-tasked apps. Click and hold to close them one by one.

Also shows the iPod controls as before.

Answer 15

In 3.0, you can adjust the scrubbing speed through a song by touching the scrubbing slider, then moving your finger down on the screen. Different distances from the scrubbing bar mean different (slower) scrubbing speeds.

While it's not exactly private browsing, you can clear your Safari history, cookies, and cache from the Settings application in the Safari menu.

The Home button (when pressed in the Springboard) by default will send you to the first screen of applications. However, if you press Home, wait for the first page of apps to be displayed, then press Home again, the Search screen will be presented. Subsequent presses will toggle back and forth between the first apps page and the Search page. (Note that you have to delay slightly between presses, otherwise the two-press shortcut will kick in and launch some other app (iPod by default)).

originally submitted by Tim on Super User.

Answer 16

I've just discovered that if you scroll to the top of the list of Contacts in the Phone app, your own phone number is listed above the search field.

originally submitted by John Topley on Super User.

Answer 17

In 3.0, you can hold down the hyphen key on the keyboard to get an em dash character. Similarly hold down the period to get an ellipsis. You can also hold down keys such as "a" or "e" to get accented versions of those letters.

originally submitted by John Topley on Super User.

Answer 18

In the Mail application you can select the portion of text that you want to quote. Hit the Reply button and the selection will appear at the end of the email, instead of the whole original message.

originally submitted by John Topley on Super User.

Answer 19

In the maps app you don't have to pinch to zoom in and out. Double tapping zooms in and tapping with two fingers zooms out.

This makes it much easier when you are using the phone with one hand.

originally submitted by andynormancx on Super User.

Answer 20

In 3.0, when editing some text, shake the phone to get the option undo your edits. To redo your edits, just shake the phone again.

originally submitted by andynormancx on Super User.

Answer 21

You can double tap the shift to keep caps lock on.
Tap just below the seek/scrub bar to hide/show it.

originally submitted by e11world on Super User.

Answer 22

You can listen to any audio that is being streamed through Quicktime in Safari (.mp3, .m3u, .pls etc files) in the background.

Start the stream via a link in Safari.app, and then hit the home button and the audio will continue to play.

This was very notable pre-iOS4, not sure if it worked pre iOS3 though.

Answer 23

In Maps, you can switch to street view by dropping a pin, tapping it, and then tapping the little orange guy.

Answer 24

VoiceControl has some undocumented features:

• If you have multiple phone numbers for people, you can say which phone number to call, 'call John Smith home', 'call Davey Jones mobile'.
• If you have assigned nicknames, you can use them too 'call wife', 'call dad'

Answer 25

If the iPhone is locked, and you double press the Home button to bring up the iPod controls while playing a song, shaking the iPhone skips to the next song.

Answer 26

While using the iPod/music app:

• single clicking the headphones remote button will pause the music.
• double clicking the headphones remote button will skip to the next song.
• triple clicking the headphones remote button will go back to the previous song.

Answer 27

When the iPhone is locked you can still access the iPod back/play/pause/next track buttons by pressing the Home button twice - only discovered that the other day and completely by accident...!

originally submitted by Mike McClelland on Super User.

Answer 28

safari: scroll on top --> hit the top toolbar (where the time, battery etc is displayed) to scroll on top.

Answer 29

If you've come around a good picture in your safari browser and sadly there's no option to save the image, you can do it via, screenshot feature in iPhone. Just hold the power button on top of iPhone and while holding it, just press Home button once. You'll get the screenshot of your iPhone screen which you can edit later easily with Photoshop Express.

http://mobile.photoshop.com/iphone/

Hope it helps. :)

Answer 30

Starting from iOS4, while listening to music in iPod app the screen turns on for a second to show what song is currently playing. It won't happen if the iPhone is in your pocket.