Now that iPhone software 3.0 has been out for a while, I’ve had a chance to play with it, and found some great new tricks. Here they are…
Punctuation Slide
Another new feature is the ability to slide a finger when using punctuation. Huh?
This is cool, but not intuitive. Type something, then tap the punctuation key (.?123) and slide your finger to the punctuation mark you want to use. An exclamation point, for example. Lift your finger and you are back at the regular keyboard.
You can still tap the punctuation key and tap the comma or number, etc. that you want, and tap the ABC key to get back to the regular keyboard, but that takes way too long.
There are some special characters too. Tap and hold the period to type an ellipsis (…), or a dash to type an em-dash (_). Tap the quote key and hold it ad you can get several versions of quotation marks. This works for lots of characters and letters. Try all the vowels… you will have access to all the accent marks used in various languages, the S key has accented s plus ß, or you could get a ¥ from the Y key. ¿ and ¡ are the / and ! keys, the $ key has Yen, Pounds, Euro and Yuan (I think).
AT&T Login at Free Hot Spots
Yes, you could go to Starbucks or MacDonalds (and other free hotspots) and log on to access the Internet before. Now your phone will logon automatically. Not a huge deal, but not bad.
Open a link in a new window – and more
Safari is a decent browser on the iPhone, but I always hated having to lose the page I was on to open a new one. Now, you can open a link on the current page, or open it on a new page, by tapping and holding the link. Then pick from the menu: Open in the current page, open the link in a new page or copy the link to the clipboard.
Autofill
There is now an Autofull button for forms and passwords, too. I use 1Password for this, but the Autofill is a great addition to Mobile Safari
Spotlight
I use Spotlight a lot on my Mac, and while it is far from perfect, it works pretty well. The lack of the ability to search all the data on my iPhone, on the other hand, didn’t work at all. Now, we have the opportunity to type in a search term and find all that good stuff.
There are a few ways to get to the new Spotlight app. You can slide a finger right while on the home screen, or you can tap the Home button twice. Tap slowly, and hold the button down after the second tap, and it will take you to Spotlight.
Searches will bring results from Contacts, Applications, Music, Podcasts, Video, Audiobooks, Notes, Mail, and Calendar, in that order. You can go to Settings -> General -> Home -> Search Results (at the very bottom of the page) to either eliminate a category of results, or to change the order, by holding on the faint icons to the right of the category and sliding up or down.
If you put Applications on top, you can use Spotlight as an App launcher, just as you can on the Mac… instead of sliding across up to 11 screens.
Maps
You can Map locations easily now with the 3.0 update. You can even dial the phone from Mail and Calendar events. This is very cool… if you have a calendar event with an address in the Notes field (it only works there), tap the address and you’ll be shown a map of the address. It’s a little nutty that the address can’t be in the Location field, and with a little luck and good sense, that will be fixed in a new release soon.
If the Notes field of the Calendar field has a phone number, you can tap it and the phone automatically dials. I LOVE this.
If you have an email with an address or phone number, it works much the same… a very nice improvement indeed. I was going to a meeting today, and was able to bring up the calendar event, tap the phone number and let my associate know that I’d be 10 minutes late. Last week, I couldn’t find the Starbucks where I was supposed to meet someone, but tapping the address brought up the map, and I got there easily.
Cut, Copy and Paste
It’s about time, isn’t it? The new clipboard is not as easy to use at first as I’d like, but it does work.
Tap on the cursor and hold. When you pick your finger up, Select, Select All and Paste buttons appear at the top of the screen. Select will auto-select a word if the cursor is inside the word, or you can select with a swipe. Select All is, well, it selects everything. Paste, you already know.
With a selection highlighted, you can drag the handles at each end to make your selection exactly what you want. Then, go where you want to paste the text, even in another app, and paste the text where you want it. Great for putting someone’s contact info into an email when you want to make a referral.
You can erase text by selecting it and tapping the delete key, by typing over the text, or by pasting over it… just like on your computer.
What I really like is the Undo feature. Shake the phone to undo type or paste.
AT&T Login at Free Hot Spots
Yes, you could go to Starbucks or MacDonalds (and other free hotspots) and log on to access the Internet before. Now your phone will logon automatically. Not a huge deal, but not bad.
Home Button behavior
Yes, you can push the round button to go to the home screen, if you are already on the home screen, push it again to get to Spotlight. Push it twice slowly and you go to Spotlight. Push it twice quickly, you can go to a favored location set in Settings -> General -> Home.
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