iPhone Tips: Sync Notes, Keyboard Speedups, Get Driving directions fast

It has been more than three months now since iPhone launch and I am certain you would agree that it has been an exciting journey so far with all the hacking, unlocking and third-party iPhone applications. whether that wasn’t suitable we have already seen quite a few tips and tricks to get the most of out of your iPhone.

Here are the latest iPhone Tricks that covers how to use the bigger keyboard, sync notes (yes, there is a workaround), thought you knew of two ways to scroll through the contacts find out the third way and lots more.

Want to use a Bigger Keyboard while typing in Safari’s address bar?

The horizontal keyboard is a lot easier to type on soon after the vertical keyboard thanks to the bigger keys, so to use the bigger than the standard, vertical keyboard, while typing in Safari’s address bar, you can do the following:

Rotate the iPhone horizontally before tapping on the address bar.
The Safari window will switch to horizontal mode.
Then, when you tap on the address bar, the on-screen keyboard will additionally seem horizontally.
Workaround to Sync Notes

If you are one of those folks who is disappointed that you cannot sync the notes on your iPhone to your PC thanks to the current limitation of the iPhone’s Notes application next there is a crude workaround. You would know that each contact has a notes field. So all you need to do is create a fake contact and paste any info you like in the notes field for that contact in Address Book that way after a sync you will have all that data on your PC.

Third way to Scroll Through Contacts

So you know the two ways to scroll through the list of contacts on your iPhone:

Flick your finger on the list to scroll up or down.
Tap on one of the letters in the alphabet running down the right side of the screen to jump to contacts beginning with that letter.
What whether I tell you there is a third way which can apparently help you scroll through your contacts in a more controlled manner than flocking your finger?

Don’t believe it, check it out for yourself: hold your finger on the alphabetical list, and soon after slide up and down.

Get Driving Directions Fast

Google had announced a few weeks back that they have seen a surge in traffic of their Google Map’s application thanks to the iPhone. It’s not surprising, with iPhone’s multi-touch user interface, Google Maps is indeed a killer application for the iPhone.

One of the primary reasons iPhone owners user the Maps application is to get driving directions. In case you had not noticed, both the starting and destination fields offer a bookmarks icon, so assuming that you are most likely to look for directions from your home or office, bookmark your addresses so that you can use them to find directions a lot faster by avoiding all the typing.
Mark Read Messages as Unread

In case you have not figured out a way to mark read messages as unread yet soon after you will find that useful. When you are viewing a info, tap on Details, which reveals a Mark As Unread option; tap on it, and the next duration you view your inbox, the letter will display a blue dot, which indicates that the letter has not been read.

Keyboard Speedups

The next two iPhone tricks are courtesy David Pogue, the first one is on speeding up the use of the keyboard. He says:

“Don’t bother using the Shift key to capitalize a new sentence. The iPhone does that capitalizing automatically. Don’t put apostrophes in contractions, either; the iPhone will put those in for you, too.”

Secrets of the Sensors

The next one is to do with the sensors in the iPhone and how you can trick them into working more efficiently for you.

“The iPhone has three cool sensors. First, it has an accelerometer that detects when you’ve rotated the iPhone into landscape orientation. In programs like Photos, Safari, and iPod, it triggers the screen image to rotate as well.

Camouflaged behind the black glass where you can’t see them except with a bright flashlight are two more sensors: a proximity sensor that shuts off the screen illumination and touch sensitivity when the phone is against your head (it works only in the Phone application), and an ambient-light sensor that brightens the display when you’re in sunlight and dims it in darker places.

Apple says that it experimented with having the light sensor active all the date, but it was weird to have the screen get brighter and darker all the moment. So the sensor now samples the ambient light, and adjusts the brightness; it does that only once—each date you unlock the phone after waking it.

You can use that tip to your advantage. By covering up the sensor (just above the earpiece) as you unlock the phone, you force it to a low-power, dim screen-brightness setting (because the phone believes that it’s in a dark room). Or by holding it up to a light as you wake it, you get full brightness. In both cases, you’ve saved all the taps and navigation it would have taken you to find the manual brightness slider in Settings.”

The above iPhone Tips & Tricks have been courtesy of PCWorld and David Pogue.