iPhone Newbie Questions

[»X«]

Next month when the iPhone 3G is upon us, Ive decided to get myself one, see what all the fuss about. But my decision is somewhat mixed. So I have made a list of questions which iPhone owners will know. I just need these newbie questions cleared up.

• Am I right in assuming the only way I can have custom ringtones is using Apples bought ones? I cant just use a .wav or .mp3 to use as one?
  
• Is it true that the camera cannot record?
  
• How do you find texting using the iPhone? Just how smart is the autocorrect and how easy is that feature to use?
  
• Everything that goes on the iPhone, from pictures to videos etc has to go via iTunes first?
  

And the big question. Just how practical is it? What I mean is, with my N95 I click one key and get to a new msg, or hold a key to dial a number. How fast is it to get where you want to be? I dont like the thought of having to tap tap tap just to dial a number or read an SMS.

And I would just like to know what the sceptics thoughts. Did you think it was going to suck but fell it love with it? I want to know your stories.

Now the price will fall, I cant say Its not alot of money to blow on a phone. But its still a purchase I dont want to regret, hence the questions.

Thanks

[mattrobs]

• Am I right in assuming the only way I can have custom ringtones is using Apples bought ones? I cant just use a .wav or .mp3 to use as one?
  
• Is it true that the camera cannot record?
  
• How do you find texting using the iPhone? Just how smart is the autocorrect and how easy is that feature to use?
  
• Everything that goes on the iPhone, from pictures to videos etc has to go via iTunes first?
  

• Technically, yes. But if you have a Mac, there's a loophole in Garageband allowing you to import any music into iTunes as a ringtone. Also, I believe there are other tricks to get ringtones in iTunes. So really, you're good.
  
• Yes. But expect an app in the app store to offer this functionality. It's a given, really.
  
• If you're coming from T9, the iPhone is a breeze. The auto-correction really saves it here. You don't really need to pay attention to get the all the letters; if you touch an adjacent letter, it'll correct it, almost 100% of the time. It has a learning curve, but I've managed a much better efficiency than my old alpha-numeric one.
  
• Yes. There's nothing wrong with that.
  

I've assigned the double-tap-the-home-button to my phone's favourites. Anywhere, double-tap, tap a name, and you're calling. Faster than voice dialing. SMS is always a two-tap away. Home button; SMS icon. I don't see the criticism. If you receive an SMS while the phone is locked, "Slide to Unlock" changes to "Slide to View" and it sends you right into the SMS convo.

If you get the iPhone, you're really getting a great user interface. Other companies produce good looking stuff, but once you turn it on, it's just really bad design. For me, the clean look, crisp fonts (160ppi!) and smooth performance sold me.

Edited June 12, 2008 by mattrobs

[Digitalx]

screen quality on iphone and ipod touch is top notch and i can vouch for that in the way that i've not seen it matched on another phone.

[»X«]

• Technically, yes. But if you have a Mac, there's a loophole in Garageband allowing you to import any music into iTunes as a ringtone. Also, I believe there are other tricks to get ringtones in iTunes. So really, you're good.

What sort of tricks?

If you're coming from T9, the iPhone is a breeze. The auto-correction really saves it here. You don't really need to pay attention to get the all the letters; if you touch an adjacent letter, it'll correct it, almost 100% of the time. It has a learning curve, but I've managed a much better efficiency than my old alpha-numeric one.

Can the keyboard be rotated to landscape?

I've assigned the double-tap-the-home-button to my phone's favourites. Anywhere, double-tap, tap a name, and you're calling. Faster than voice dialing. SMS is always a two-tap away. Home button; SMS icon. I don't see the criticism. If you receive an SMS while the phone is locked, "Slide to Unlock" changes to "Slide to View" and it sends you right into the SMS convo.

So if you hit the home button twice, you will get to your phone favourites?

Also, when you get a txt, before you slide it to view, what does it tell you about the txt? Is it just "you have a new sms" or is there more detail?

[CPressland]

I have custom ringtones setup without buying them.

Simply convert the track to AAC, drag it out of iTunes onto the desktop, open it in QuickTime Pro and clip out 30 seconds of music you want and save it on the desktop in AAC (M4A) format, then simply change the extension to M4R, move it into your Ringtones folder in the Music folder and double click it. Done :D

Also using iTunes with the iPhone is the best bit :D

[mattrobs]

Can the keyboard be rotated to landscape?

For some apps. But know that it's designed, expecting you to mistype. Don't focus on getting it right; just run with it and the prediction will do the rest. Also in addition to auto-correction, apparently it also pre-empts your keys. If you're typing "catch" and up to 'cat', the 'c' would have a larger touch target than the adjacent keys as there's no word 'catx' or 'catf'. It's all transparent, though.

So if you hit the home button twice, you will get to your phone favourites?

Also, when you get a txt, before you slide it to view, what does it tell you about the txt? Is it just "you have a new sms" or is there more detail?

You can choose between double-tap for phone favourites or iPod controls. The lock screen shows you a preview of the SMS message.

[Cara Veteran]

I have custom ringtones setup without buying them.

Simply convert the track to AAC, drag it out of iTunes onto the desktop, open it in QuickTime Pro and clip out 30 seconds of music you want and save it on the desktop in AAC (M4A) format, then simply change the extension to M4R, move it into your Ringtones folder in the Music folder and double click it. Done :D

Also using iTunes with the iPhone is the best bit :D

That is normally how I do it. ;)

[obiwong]

i have another question about the iPhone

looking at the specs on gsmarena.com, i see that the bluetooth can only be used for headsets?

is there no file transfer option? :blink:

[mattrobs]

looking at the specs on gsmarena.com, i see that the bluetooth can only be used for headsets?

is there no file transfer option? :blink:

Nope. We're all annoyed about that one. Assumedly they've had their hands full with this SDK and Enterprise; they should get to it eventually.

[»X«]

When you get a new email or sms while listening to music, will the iphone let you know through your headphones?

[thefarewellnote]

When you get a new email or sms while listening to music, will the iphone let you know through your headphones?

Yes it will. It will make the normal sound and then start playing the music again.

Also for ring tones - if you don't want to install GarageBand you would look at iToner from Ambrosia Software. It is a great piece of software and they are constantly updating it.

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/iToner/

[»X«]

iToner looks great, but alas, its not for PC.

I cant foresee any major worries about the iPhone apart from me wanting my custom ringtones.

I also don't see all this fuss about its lack of MMS. Because surely, sending 100 emails to someone (which is free) then sending 100 MMS which take more time and cost like ?0.50+ a pop, seems a no brainer.

Can anyone suggest a good video showing more about the iPhone? Ive been over youtube but I couldnt find a good one and I dont like the small video. I noticed apples official iPhone video has been removed. Cant wait for the new one!

[mattrobs]

They moved them to iTunes. Otherwise just go down to an Apple Store and try it yourself.

[»X«]

Ive been using my trusty Zen Vision M for a couple of years. Moving to the iPhone will be odd since I love the built in radio. However my main concern is remembering track positions.

I have about 500 mp3's which are radio shows. Each mp3 is about an hour long and I dont get the time to listen in one sitting. So on my zen i use the bookmark feature to not only remember which track it is, but where I left it (since the zen will forget the playback position if its left off for while). Is there such a feature for the iPhone?

I know you can use iTunes to remember playback positions but its the track itself I want to remember.

For example, I listen to track 56 of this show and Im 33 minutes into it. I then make a call on my iPhone, browse the web etc. Then 4 hours later I want to pick it up right where I left off. Can it be done simply? Or is it a case of me having to remember the track name and find it by hand?

[mattrobs]

The iPod app remembers states. So if you exit it, coming back will still have that song selected and paused. That, and podcasts remember what position you're up to.

[GuJu]

jail break for the first to

i can text with out looking now, and the auto correct is pretty good.

and its just like an ipod, everything goes through iTunes.

I find it has more uses everyday, safari is really good. and jailbreaking it makes it even better. some really good apps out there.

[»X«]

After reading documentation about the iPhone I wanted to know a few things.

Is it true that instead of an inbox with say 200 txt messages, you now have just one long thread message and you cannot delete or save individual messages?

If so do any of you iPhone users find that irritating?

Also I found a video which showed that if you?re composing a txt message, you cannot save it and finish it later. You either send it, or loose it. That also true?

Reason I keep asking is its ?true? is because these were old videos and Im hoping new firmware has addresses some issues. They aren?t deal breakers but I will be annoyed If I type a long message and find I cant save until later.

[mattrobs]

SMSs are grouped by sender in conversation threads. Yes, you can't delete individual SMSs. But why would you want to? Either clear the whole thing and start fresh, or leave it for chat history. Apple = simplicity.

All apps save states. So if you're mid-typing an SMS, when you re-open it, it'll be right back to where it was. Isn't the point of SMSs to type short messages, anyway? (And I don't know about the US, but here, but a long SMS will break up into smaller SMSs anyway.)

[duritz]

SMSs are grouped by sender in conversation threads. Yes, you can't delete individual SMSs. But why would you want to? Either clear the whole thing and start fresh, or leave it for chat history. Apple = simplicity.

All apps save states. So if you're mid-typing an SMS, when you re-open it, it'll be right back to where it was. Isn't the point of SMSs to type short messages, anyway? (And I don't know about the US, but here, but a long SMS will break up into smaller SMSs anyway.)

my phone breaks up messages in 160 character increments. I think that is how everyone of them is.

[MiPeNiS]

I am a wm6 user and I am thinking of making the switch due to the browser being that much easier to use imo, but there are things like RDP support that I am used to and need. I understand the logistics of safari being a "full browser" on the iphone. would it supporst something like log me in? if it's not supported, is there any work arounds?

[Menge]

yeh the iPhone will group SMS messages in threads based on who the messages were sent out to.

you can't delete individual messages, but you can delete individual threads (swipe finger sideways toward the left on the thread in the thread list and the delete button will appear) or clear the whole thing out.

it's quite useful. so when you want to see the whole conversation context, you see only the conversation between you and that person. it's not annoying at all.

if you go back to the home screen, the SMS app tries to save the state it was so you can resume when you come back.

[»X«]

Got it this morning and so far its amazing. But I have a few questions I hope people can answer.

One of the reasons I really wanted to get it was because of an app called customize. Soon as I jailbroke it, I installed the app from the installer. But it failed to run. I installed the SUID pack which was said to improve things and it did. It ran. but its slow as hell. Taking almost 5 minutes to open one menu in the app and when I click on themes it locks up the iphone. Also I downloaded summerboard but it seems to be the old version.

So my question, does anyone know any good sources for apps I can add to my iphone? The built in ones pretty much suck. Hopefully a new source will fix the customize problem.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[»X«]

Got my new iPhone on Wednesday. Was locked on O2 but good old Ziphone fixed all. However one thing stuck me, just how disappointing the applications for it are and their implementation.

Before it arrived I spent many hours on YouTube etc looking for videos and stories about the iPhone's applications. The main ones I spotted were installer (obviously) and customize & summerboard.

With the videos I saw it was quick and easy, with summerboard you can scroll up/down with ease and change themes.

But in practice and for a first time user, it wasn?t the case at all.

Firstly, installer.app failed to find customize. Even a search yielded nothing. I had to go through the menu to find it. Then it listed 2 entries. Both IDENTICAL except one had an extra space in the description. This confused me for a start. When I installed it (I had to install the SUID to get it to run) I found it so slow it was unbearable. More often than not crashing out to the home screen, taking 2/3 minutes to open one menu or completely locking up the iPhone where only a hard reset will do.

So I took my chances and searched for summerboard. There were 2 versions again but one was labelled old so I went for the new one. That installed fine but it doesn?t actually do ANYTHING. I can?t flip up and down. That?s all I wanted it for and it doesn?t give me the option. It seems to me all these applications people are using are from different sources. The summerboard I saw in a video had tonnes of extra options; this one just allows me to change a few basic things like wallpaper and dock labels.

Im confused, if I google summerboard it takes me to its "official?" site which statWhere do I get it?et it?

SummerBoard is available from AppTapp's Installer, simply install AppTapp onto your iPhone (if you haven't yet) and install the SummerBoard package!

Obviously clicking on that takes me an an ancient installer website. Back to square one. The Version you get with installer.app it pretty much useless.

Since having the phone and trying out apps ive restored the iphone 5 times, in 2 days. Any pointers would be helpful. I dont want the earth, just dustom themes that dont lock up my phone and summerboard which actually works.

[chuvak317]

my phone breaks up messages in 160 character increments. I think that is how everyone of them is.

My current phone breaks up text messages as well. However, I have gotten some pretty long texts from my friend who was the First-gen iPhone. Perhaps since we're both on at&t the system saw no need to break them up into smaller sizes.

Got my new iPhone on Wednesday.

So you decided to not wait for the 3G iPhone? There's only 8 more days to wait now...

[»X«]

there was no point waiting. I won't be able to afford the 3G iPhone handset and I can't get contract. Besides, 3G isn't the be all and end all.