The iPhone isn’t quite like any machine that came before it, and operating it isn’t quite like using any other machine. You do everything on the touch screen instead of with physical buttons. Here’s what you need to know.
Tap
You’ll do a lot of tapping on the iPhone’s on-screen buttons. They’re usually nice and big, giving [...]
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Inside the minimalist box, you get the iPhone, its earbud/mike cord, and:
The charging/syncing cable. When you connect your iPhone to your computer using this white USB cable, it simultaneously syncs and charges. The original iPhone came with a white desktop dock, which you could use instead. (The same cable plugged into that dock instead of [...]
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On the bottom edge of the iPhone, Apple has parked three important components, none of which you’ll ever have to bother with: the speakerphone
speaker, the microphone, and, directly below the Home button, the 30-pin connector that charges and syncs the iPhone with your computer.
On the back of the iPhone, the camera lens appears in the [...]
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Praise be to the gods of technology this phone has a silencer switch!
This little flipper, on the left edge at the top, means that no ringer or alert
sound will humiliate you in a meeting, a movie, or church. When you move
the switch toward the front of the iPhone, the ringer is on. When you push [...]
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Here it is: the one and only real button on the front of this phone. (It’s identified
on the facing page.) Push it to summon the Home screen, which is your
gateway to everything the iPhone can do.
Having a Home button is a wonderful thing. It means you can never get [...]
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Here’s a roundup of the icons that you may see in the status bar at the top of the iPhone screen, from left to right:
Cell Signal. As on any cellphone, the number of bars indicates the strength of your cell signal, and thus the quality of your call audio and
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The touch screen is your mouse, keyboard, dialing pad, and note pad. It’s going to get fingerprinty and streaky, although it wipes clean with a quick rub on your sleeve. You can also use it as a mirror when the iPhone is off.
But what about scratches? Fortunately, Apple learned its lesson on this one. The [...]
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The tour continues with the top left corner of the iPhone. Here’s where you plug in the white earbuds that came with your iPhone. This little hole is more than an ordinary 3.5-millimeter audio jack, however. It contains a secret fourth pin that conducts sound into the phone from the microphone on the earbuds’ cord. [...]
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On the top edge of the phone, in the middle, is a tiny pinhole next to what looks like a very thin slot cover (see page 6). If you push an unfolded paper clip straight into the hole—or the more refined, sterling silver “SIM eject tool” that comes with the iPhone 3G—the SIM card tray [...]
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On the top right edge of the iPhone, you’ll find a button shaped like a dash. It’s silver metal on the iPhone 3G; it’s black plastic on the original.
This, ladies and gents, is the Sleep switch. It has several functions:
Sleep/Wake. Tapping it once puts the iPhone to sleep—that is, into
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