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Top 5: Things you can do with your iPhone...
Mon, 7th Apr 2014
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Sure, you make calls, send emails, check Facebook, take photos, browse the web and play games on your iPhone. But what else?

Here are  five function gems of the iPhone that are not only fun, but functional, too.

And before you jump into the comments section about how all phones can do these neat tricks, or that everyone already knows iPhones can do these neat tricks, bear with me.

I love my phone but I have never sat with it and played with it for hours to see what it can do. It does the things I need it to do, so I found these neat tricks very exciting. And I presume there are lots, or at least a few, who are like me.

1.Make a mistake while entering text or editing a photo? No problem. Just give your phone a vigorous shake, and a window will appear, asking if you want to undo that action. Yes!

2. As we found out last night when we were trying to take cool snaps of ourselves at Men of Steel, pressing the screen when holding your phone out to take a selfie can be very hard.

Especially after lots of gin. Did you know you can use the volume buttons instead? I didn’t. You can simply press the Volume Up or Volume Down button. Just make sure the camera app is open first.

3. Add typing shortcuts for those extra lazy days. For those who enter certain words or passwords often, you can create shortcuts that let you enter them much more quickly.

For example, you can type “omw” and your iPhone will automatically enter it as “On my way.” How helpful; thank you iPhone.

In Settings, navigate to General>Keyboard>Shortcuts>Add New Shortcut. Then, enter the word or phrase, as well as its shortcut. This is especially handy for passwords; enter the shortcut into the username field, then paste the password into the password field. Bonus: You can create shortcuts for emoji, too.

4. You can make a better passcode than the standard one. By default, the iPhone’s passcode is a basic 4-digit number. However, you can make it more difficult for would-be thieves by creating an alphanumeric code.

Open Settings>General>Passcode and turn off the setting that says “Simple Passcode.” Next, the a screen will appear asking you to change your passcode, with a full QWERTY keyboard below. The next time you unlock your phone, the keyboard will appear instead of just the number pad.

5. LED flashing for notifcations. My friend has this feature on his phone and I thought at first it was super annoying, but as long as you’re not getting twenty notifications a minute, it’s not too bad.

Designed for those who are hard of hearing, using the LED flash on your iPhone is also handy if you simply don’t want to hear your phone ring or buzz every time you get a new message or call.

Go to Settings -> General -> Accessibility, and scroll down to “LED Flash for Alerts" and flip the toggle to the “on” position.