iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C Portable Genius

Chapter 1
How Do I Start Using My iPhone?

When you first look at your iPhone, you notice its sleek, curvaceous design, and then you notice what might be its most remarkable feature: no buttons! Unlike your garden-variety smartphone bristling with keys and switches and ports, your iPhone has very few physical buttons. This makes for a stylish, possibly even sexy, design, but it also leads to an obvious problem out of the box: How do you work the darn thing? This chapter solves that problem by giving you the grand tour of your iPhone. You learn about the few physical buttons on the phone, and then I show you the real heart of the iPhone, the remarkable touchscreen.

Using the Home Button

The starting point for most of your iPhone excursions is the Home button, which is the circular button on the face of the phone at the bottom, as shown in Figure 1.1. The Home button has five main functions:

1.1 Press the Home button to (among other things) leave standby mode or to return to the Home screen.

When the iPhone is in standby mode, pressing the Home button wakes the iPhone and displays the unlock screen.

When the unlock screen is displayed, leave your thumb (or whichever finger you’ve trained) on the Home button to unlock your iPhone using your fingerprint.

When the iPhone is running, pressing the Home button returns the iPhone to the Home screen.

Pressing and holding the Home button invokes Siri, which enables you to control many iPhone features using voice commands. (If Siri is turned off, pressing and holding the Home button invokes Voice Control, Siri’s predecessor.)

Double-pressing the Home button displays the multitasking bar, which enables you to quickly switch between your running apps (see the section on switching between running apps later in this chapter).

If your iPhone is in standby mode, press the Home button to display the slide to unlock screen, shown in Figure 1.2. (The iPhone displays this screen for up to about 8 seconds, and if you don’t do anything the phone just drops back into standby mode.) Place your finger on the left side of the screen and slide it to the right side of the screen. This unlocks the iPhone and displays the Home screen.

1.2 Slide your finger along the screen from left to right to unlock your iPhone.

Working with the Sleep/Wake Button

If your iPhone is on but you’re not using it, the phone automatically goes into standby mode after one minute. This is called Auto-Lock and it’s a handy feature because it saves battery power when your iPhone is just sitting there. However, you can also put your iPhone into standby mode at any time by using the Sleep/Wake button. You find this button at the top of your phone. It’s the dash-shaped button on the right (see Figure 1.3) and, as you see in this section, this button actually has three main functions: sleeping and waking, powering on and off, and handling incoming calls.

1.3 The Sleep/Wake button on your iPhone.

Sleeping and waking the iPhone

If you’re currently using your iPhone, you put the phone in standby mode by pressing the Sleep/Wake button once. You can still receive incoming calls and texts, but the screen powers down, which drops the power consumption considerably. Tap the Sleep/Wake button again to wake your iPhone. This is just like pressing the Home button: You’re prompted with the slide to unlock screen, and you slide your finger from the left side of the screen to the right to unlock the phone.

Press the Sleep/Wakebutton to put your phone in standby whenever you’re not using the screen. This not only conserves battery power but also prevents accidental screen taps. If you have a program such as the Music app running, it continues to run even after the phone is in standby.

Powering the iPhone on and off

You can also use the Sleep/Wake button to turn off your iPhone so that it uses no power. This is a good idea if your battery is getting low and you don’t think you’ll be able to charge it any time soon. You can still periodically check your messages or make an outgoing call when needed, but as long as you turn the phone off when you’re done, you minimize the chance that your battery will drain completely. You might also want to turn off your iPhone if you won’t be using it for a few days.

Follow these steps to turn off your iPhone:

1. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button for three seconds. The slide to power off slider appears on the screen.

If you change your mind and decide to leave your iPhone on, tap Cancel at the bottom of the screen. Note, too, that the slide to power off screen automatically cancels itself if you do nothing for 30 seconds.

2. Use your finger to drag the slider all the way to the right. The iPhone shuts down after a few seconds.

When you’re ready to resume your iPhone chores, press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until you see the Apple icon. The iPhone powers up and then a few seconds later displays the unlock screen.

Silencing or declining a call

The Sleep/Wake button has another couple of tricks up its electronic sleeve, and these features give you quick ways to handle incoming calls:

Silence an incoming call. Press the Sleep/Wake button once. This temporarily turns off the ringer, which is great in situations where you don’t want to disturb the folks around you. You still have the standard four rings to answer, should you decide to. If you don’t answer, your iPhone sends the call to your voicemail.

Decline an incoming call. Press the Sleep/Wake button twice. This sends the call directly to voicemail, which is useful in situations where you don’t want the ringing to disturb your neighbors and you don’t want to answer the call. Note that, in this case, you don’t have the option of answering the call.

Working with the Ring/Silent Switch

When a call comes in and you press the Sleep/Wake button once, your iPhone silences the ringer. That’s great if you’re in a meeting or a movie, but the only problem is that it may take you one or two rings before you can tap Sleep/Wake, and by that time the folks nearby are already glaring at you.

To prevent this phone faux pas, you can switch your iPhone into silent mode, which means it doesn’t ring, and it doesn’t play any alerts or sound effects. When the sound is turned off, only alarms that you’ve set using the Clock application will sound. The phone will still vibrate unless you turn this feature off as well.

You switch the iPhone between ring and silent modes using the Ring/Silent switch, which is located on the left side of the iPhone, near the top (assuming you’re holding the phone in portrait mode, where the Home button appears at the bottom), as shown in Figure 1.4.

1.4 Use the Ring/Silent switch to toggle your phone between ring and silent modes.

Use the following techniques to switch between silent and ring modes:

Put the phone in silent mode. Flick the Ring/Silent switch toward the back of the phone. You see an orange stripe on the switch, the iPhone vibrates briefly, and the screen displays a bell with a slash through it.

Resume normal ring mode. Flick the Ring/Silent switch toward the front of the phone. You no longer see the orange stripe on the switch and the iPhone displays a bell on the screen.

Operating the Volume Controls

The volume controls are on the left side of the iPhone (again, when you’re holding the phone in portrait mode), right below the Ring/Silent switch (see Figure 1.4). The button closer to the top of the iPhone is Volume Up, and you press it to increase the volume; the button closer to the bottom of the iPhone is Volume Down, and you press it to decrease the volume. As you adjust the volume, a speaker appears on-screen with filled-in dashes representing the volume level.

You use these buttons to control the volume throughout your iPhone:

If you’re on a call, the volume controls adjust your speaker volume.

If you’re using the Music app, the volume controls adjust the music volume.

In all other situations, the volume controls adjust the output of sounds such as alerts and effects.

Getting to Know the Rest of the iPhone

Except for the touchscreen, there are a number of other physical features of your iPhone that you need to be familiar with.

For starters, the bottom panel of your iPhone has four features (see Figure 1.5):

Headset jack. The headset jack is located at the left of the bottom panel of the iPhone. This is where you plug in the EarPods that came with your iPhone to listen to music or a phone call. You can also use this jack to plug in any other headset or headphones that use a 3.5mm stereo audio jack.

Microphone. This feature is also located at the bottom of your phone, to the right of the headset jack. This is where the iPhone picks up your voice for phone conversations, recording voicemail, and anything else that requires you to speak.

1.5 The bottom panel of your iPhone houses the headset...