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What are some tricks/tips? Great apps to use?

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start saving for the new one due out in 3 months...
I dont know, not a fan

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Good to hear.

I have to wait until July before I can get a free upgrade from my blackberry ... July can't come fast enough and the kicker is I'll actually be saving 30$ a month (if I don't use more then the allotted 2 gb).


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start saving for the new one due out in 3 months...
I dont know, not a fan




i don't need the new one. i had a HTC incredible for almost 3 years. finally, it started doing weird things and restoring the phone to factory default did not even fix it. made the switch to an iphone because it was cheaper ($99 + $30 upgrade discount) than the other droids. so far, i love it. the battery kicks butt.

but, i know there are a lot of tips and tricks out there to maximize the phone, just looking for that

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I was just poking fun at the typical Apple owner. No offense intended.

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I was just poking fun at the typical Apple owner. No offense intended.




none taken. it's my first apple product and so far i like it!

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What are some tricks/tips? Great apps to use?




Free ones:

The Weather Channel (not the one built in to your phone that just gives temps, there is another one that is just like the website, can literally just click a button and it uses GPS to find out where you are and you can get the forecast, I use it every morning to see what the weather will be like)

If you use Twitter, use Echofon and not the Twitter app, it's still free but I think it works much better.

Soundhound, if there is a song you like but don't know who or what it is, just click the giant button in the middle of the screen, it will listen for a bit, and let you know what it is (It's rare that it doesn't know, database is really big)

Slacker, best internet radio app out there, better than Pandora.

Amazon, great app especially if you keep a wishlist

IMDB - pretty obvious what it does

Cleveland Browns, actually pretty good for an app run officially by the team

Key Ring, new one that someone reccomended me, allows you to scan all your rewards type cards (like panera, speedway, petsmart, etc) and can be scanned from your phone, I haven't actually had it scanned yet though, only had it for a week)

Urbanspoon, find out places near you, read reviews (although there aren't enough reviews) works like the Weather Channel app where you can just hit the GPS button and it will find out where you are and what's around you

Gasbuddy, allows you to see the cheapest gas near you

Words with Friends, free app that allows you to play scrabble with your friends

HD Wallpapers, can download pictures for free to use as backround wallpaper

Netflix, if you have an acct

Directv if you have an acct

Skype, video chat with people.

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My wife and I love our I-phone 4s.. (we both have one)

Obviously, some that you may want are:

Facebook
Linkedin
YPMobile (Yellow pages, really neat app)
Cleveland Browns
Google Earth
Google
Cleveland.com
Genius Scan
Amazon Price Check
I'm a AAA member so I got both of thier mobile apps
IMDB
Ebay
Netflix
adobe Reader
Paypal
Dragon

I also like Google Translate. Allows you to speak english and tranlate it to other langages

I have my bank app on there as well as insurance app (geico) and CVS Drugstore,

Learn to use SIRI... neat stuff and some of the answer you get are incredibly funny. For instance, if you tell Siri you love her, she respond with "I bet you say that to all your Apple products" (if you google funny things SIRI says, you will find a bunch more)

YPMobile is pretty sweet. No matter where you are if you ask a question, like, "where are pizza shops" it will list out all the pizza shops close to you present location. Siri does this also.. Haven't decided which is better. THey both work so darn well

Also, if at home you have a WiFi set up, make sure you set your phone to jump on that signal whenever you are home, or also to latch on to any unsecured signal,, say at Starbucks or other hotspots.

Learn to use the speech recognition (has a little microphone) when writing or responding to an email.. or even to post on facebook.. lots easier than typing it all in.

By the way, all the apps I mentioned above are Free.. THere are about 500,000 total apps out there.. not all are free of course.

Good luck and enjoy... I bet you will love it.

Last edited by Damanshot; 02/13/12 12:54 PM.

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thanks spurgeon and daman! i'll have to check those out. right now i have my phone on the wifi at my home and at the office. i charged it friday and have been using the heck out of it. still 40% battery life left and its monday afternoon!

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I'm guessing that since you paid $99 that you have a 4 and not a 4S? If that's the case then you won't have Siri. If not, disregard.

I can't stress enough the importance of routinely backing up and syncing your data to a computer and/or iCloud. Losing contacts, texts, pictures and other information sucks, but backing up will prevent all of that.

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I don't have an iPhone, but I do have an iPod touch and most of the apps apply to both.

Some Freebies I have:

I have all my credit cards' banking apps.
FirstMerit bank for doing immediate online bill pay instead of firing up the laptop.
TDAmeritrade App for stocks.
Rhapsody. Rhapsody requires an account, but I can download entire albums in a minute to listen to offline.
Bleacher Report (Browns, Cavs, Indians set up as my favorite teams.)
Browns
ESPN
Netflix
iTunes University (Free college courses. Taking an Astro-Physics class right now from Yale.)
Webster's Dictionary. (Say the word and it looks it up).
Wikipedia


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Quote:

My wife and I love our I-phone 4s.. (we both have one)

Obviously, some that you may want are:

Facebook
Linkedin
YPMobile (Yellow pages, really neat app)
Cleveland Browns
Google Earth
Google
Cleveland.com
Genius Scan
Amazon Price Check
I'm a AAA member so I got both of thier mobile apps
IMDB
Ebay
Netflix
adobe Reader
Paypal
Dragon

I also like Google Translate. Allows you to speak english and tranlate it to other langages

I have my bank app on there as well as insurance app (geico) and CVS Drugstore,

Learn to use SIRI... neat stuff and some of the answer you get are incredibly funny. For instance, if you tell Siri you love her, she respond with "I bet you say that to all your Apple products" (if you google funny things SIRI says, you will find a bunch more)

YPMobile is pretty sweet. No matter where you are if you ask a question, like, "where are pizza shops" it will list out all the pizza shops close to you present location. Siri does this also.. Haven't decided which is better. THey both work so darn well

Also, if at home you have a WiFi set up, make sure you set your phone to jump on that signal whenever you are home, or also to latch on to any unsecured signal,, say at Starbucks or other hotspots.

Learn to use the speech recognition (has a little microphone) when writing or responding to an email.. or even to post on facebook.. lots easier than typing it all in.

By the way, all the apps I mentioned above are Free.. THere are about 500,000 total apps out there.. not all are free of course.

Good luck and enjoy... I bet you will love it.




Wow! There's a whole other world out there I'm missing with my blackberry

What is the speed like? Because blackberry is twice as slow as any phone connection I ever had.


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thanks spurgeon and daman! i'll have to check those out. right now i have my phone on the wifi at my home and at the office. i charged it friday and have been using the heck out of it. still 40% battery life left and its monday afternoon!




One big thing I learned is when you are away from being able to charge, try and keep up with shutting down apps you aren't using. When you open up an app, it will still be in the backround using some battery (not as much as if it were on-screen)

double tap your home button and you will get a menu across the bottom of the screen, hold down one of the apps and they all start to shake and all have this little red cancel button in their top left corner. Just hit that button to cancel the app. It's not super important, but if you know you're going to be out and about, and away from being able to charge, it's smart to do. Keep in mind this is not deleting the app, just closing it. If you hold down the apps in the regular home screen, they shake the same, but ones that can be deleted will have small x's in the top left corner. That is to delete them, which you don't want to do, especially if you have progress in games, or information built in like usernames, passwords, etc..

I've had mine for exactly a year, just the regular 4. It's a wonderful device. Very helpful. I have noticed it slowed down a bit when the 4S came out and everyone had to d/l the new software, even those that had an older version.

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Wow! There's a whole other world out there I'm missing with my blackberry

What is the speed like? Because blackberry is twice as slow as any phone connection I ever had.




well, when I'm on a WiFi,, it screams along pretty quickly. When I'm on the phone company provided connection, it's a bit slower.. the weaker the signal the slower it moves.. Still, at it's slowest it's still a ton faster than my old Iphone 3.

I'm on the AT&T network.. There are lots of complaints,, but so far, it's pretty cool

I should point out, at home, I not only have the phone connected to my wifi, I also have a Micro Cell that that means I generally have 5 bars almost all the time.

it's fast.. really fast

As for apps,, check this out

http://www.apple.com/iphone/from-the-app-store/


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Thanks


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One big thing I learned is when you are away from being able to charge, try and keep up with shutting down apps you aren't using. When you open up an app, it will still be in the backround using some battery (not as much as if it were on-screen)





This is a big deal.. it will eat your battery quicker if you don't take the steps described.

I've also noticed that when you download an app, it asks you if you want to "push". My understanding is, that it's like updating all the time.. Another battery eater.., as well as internet time eater as well..

I always say NO to pushing..


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dang, lots of good information here! thanks so much! this is what i was hoping for when i started the thread.

I have all my contacts in gmail. I learned from my last droid that having everything in a "cloud" like environment is good. So when I got this new phone, I just synced the mail and the contacts to google and bam, all my contacts are there.

i am also backing it up to the cloud too.

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Key Ring, new one that someone reccomended me, allows you to scan all your rewards type cards (like panera, speedway, petsmart, etc) and can be scanned from your phone, I haven't actually had it scanned yet though, only had it for a week)




Sweet!

This app is really cool.


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let me know how that keyring app works...

I've had it for over a year. I tried it back then at borders, and it didn't work. Something to do with the scanners not being able to read off a phone....

might not be a problem now days. I do hate all that crap on my keyring


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I've also noticed that when you download an app, it asks you if you want to "push". My understanding is, that it's like updating all the time.. Another battery eater.., as well as internet time eater as well..

I always say NO to pushing..




Yeah..one thing I found out about all the feeds is that they really sucked my bandwidth for my other streaming (ie Netflix). I had a ton of things turned on and when I noticed a problem, I ran a speed test....it was hideous. Turned off the device and got descent speed back. Had to reassess what I really wanted to be pushed to me.


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I turned push off all the apps. Anytime you open them, they auto update so it's not really needed.


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Quote:

Quote:

One big thing I learned is when you are away from being able to charge, try and keep up with shutting down apps you aren't using. When you open up an app, it will still be in the backround using some battery (not as much as if it were on-screen)





This is a big deal.. it will eat your battery quicker if you don't take the steps described.

I've also noticed that when you download an app, it asks you if you want to "push". My understanding is, that it's like updating all the time.. Another battery eater.., as well as internet time eater as well..

I always say NO to pushing..




I turn push off for most things. I keep twitter push notifications open because I love twitter, but facebook and gmail got shut off because of the constant notifications, on top of me checking them every once in a while anyway. If you want to be kept up to speed on things, like facebook, or when you have a new email, keep it on, but try and keep that stuff to a minimum amount of apps.

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Quote:

let me know how that keyring app works...

I've had it for over a year. I tried it back then at borders, and it didn't work. Something to do with the scanners not being able to read off a phone....

might not be a problem now days. I do hate all that crap on my keyring




Lady at Binny's (liquor chain in Chicago) said they only work if the cashier has the gun-style of scanner, but she said they can still use the phone to read the numbers manually just the same.

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I turned push off all the apps. Anytime you open them, they auto update so it's not really needed.




I keep push turned off for most apps but for the AP app and a local news app I have it's nice to have my phone just light up with breaking news.


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Great post, I was gonna start this in the coming week or so, we are eligible to upgrade our phones like march 8th this year, wife is gonna stay with her "Dumb" phone cause she just doesn't use the internet, or text. That is what I have had for years to, but my job now allows a little more freedom so I'm going to upgrade to a smartphone I think. We have At&t and are happy with them.

I have some questions though, maybe someone can help, right now we share 700 minutes a month, we have maybe 200 left that rollovers every month and we pay $70, I know there is not an unlimited data plan anymore, so what kind of data plan should I go for? I plan on using the internet on the pnone for maybe 5 hours a day to start, not to download just browse. Would like to keep bill at or under $100.

I'm also looking at the Iphone cause I've had the Ipod touch for about 2 1/2 years and I'm pretty comfortable using it.

Apps I use for the Ipod touch:
Facebook
Battery Magic
The 3 Angry Bird apps
Temple Run
Ebay
Sonic Racer
ScoreMobile
Big Ten 2 go, can actually watch live sports on this app
Jet Pack, my favorite right now

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Unless they've changed things, you only get two options for data plans with the iPhone on AT&T: 200 MB or 2 GB per month. Sounds like the 2 GB will be the one for you.

Also, if you're having trouble with apps running in the background affecting battery life, it's very likely that its an app that uses location services (the ones that say "such and such app would like to use your current location" and let you click OK or Cancel). If you have an app actively using location services you'll see a little arrow in the right side of the task bar at the top, by the battery life indicator. Other than that, the only things that apps do while running in the background are things like play music (iPod, Pandora, Soundcloud, radio apps, etc), VoIP stuff like Skype, or task completion (downloading files, sending emails, etc). None of those things should adversely affect your battery life unbeknownst to you.

Pushing shouldn't affect your battery life either, as they're server-side and your phone is not actively polling the network for them.

I have push notifications enabled for probably a dozen apps, and location services enabled for many of them as well, and I have no battery life issues at all.

Also, location-based Reminders are possibly my favorite thing about the iPhone. Learn them, use them, love them.

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TuneIn Radio is the only radio app that I've found that has the local Cleveland AM station 850

Cars.com
Flixster
Tosh.O
Yelp
SiriusXM
My Fitness Pal (lost 20lbs using this app)

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I turned push off all the apps. Anytime you open them, they auto update so it's not really needed.




One I do keep on is from ESPN for the Cavs. I get a push notice of the game starting (I tend to forget when they are playing).


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TuneIn Radio is the only radio app that I've found that has the local Cleveland AM station 850




ESPN Radio has its own app as well which carries many ESPN Radio affiliates including WKNR.

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Quote:

TuneIn Radio is the only radio app that I've found that has the local Cleveland AM station 850




ESPN Radio has its own app as well which carries many ESPN Radio affiliates including WKNR.




I just downloaded Tunein.. not bad.. Thanks for the tip


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thanks spurgeon and daman! i'll have to check those out. right now i have my phone on the wifi at my home and at the office. i charged it friday and have been using the heck out of it. still 40% battery life left and its monday afternoon!




One big thing I learned is when you are away from being able to charge, try and keep up with shutting down apps you aren't using. When you open up an app, it will still be in the backround using some battery (not as much as if it were on-screen)

double tap your home button and you will get a menu across the bottom of the screen, hold down one of the apps and they all start to shake and all have this little red cancel button in their top left corner. Just hit that button to cancel the app. It's not super important, but if you know you're going to be out and about, and away from being able to charge, it's smart to do. Keep in mind this is not deleting the app, just closing it. If you hold down the apps in the regular home screen, they shake the same, but ones that can be deleted will have small x's in the top left corner. That is to delete them, which you don't want to do, especially if you have progress in games, or information built in like usernames, passwords, etc..

I've had mine for exactly a year, just the regular 4. It's a wonderful device. Very helpful. I have noticed it slowed down a bit when the 4S came out and everyone had to d/l the new software, even those that had an older version.




Had no idea about this. Thanks for the tip.


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I didn't know this either. I had a @#$% load open!!


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Yikes...

When you double-click the Home button to bring the tray up on the bottom as described, swipe from left to right once to bring up play/pause and skip forward/backwards controls for your iPod (or other currently in use audio app), as well as the portrait orientation lock button. Swipe again to get the audio volume control slider, plus AirPlay options if they're applicable.

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Quote:

Great post, I was gonna start this in the coming week or so, we are eligible to upgrade our phones like march 8th this year, wife is gonna stay with her "Dumb" phone cause she just doesn't use the internet, or text. That is what I have had for years to, but my job now allows a little more freedom so I'm going to upgrade to a smartphone I think. We have At&t and are happy with them.

I have some questions though, maybe someone can help, right now we share 700 minutes a month, we have maybe 200 left that rollovers every month and we pay $70, I know there is not an unlimited data plan anymore, so what kind of data plan should I go for? I plan on using the internet on the pnone for maybe 5 hours a day to start, not to download just browse. Would like to keep bill at or under $100.

I'm also looking at the Iphone cause I've had the Ipod touch for about 2 1/2 years and I'm pretty comfortable using it.

Apps I use for the Ipod touch:
Facebook
Battery Magic
The 3 Angry Bird apps
Temple Run
Ebay
Sonic Racer
ScoreMobile
Big Ten 2 go, can actually watch live sports on this app
Jet Pack, my favorite right now




might want to check out verizon. right now they have 4gb data for the price of 2gb.
im in columbus area laso and verizon has a lot better coverage then at&t. couple friends have at&t and always complain about it.
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/plans/?page=share
i have been with verison for over 10 years with no complaints at all. rarely get dropped calls.

might keep an eye out when the new iphone 5 comes out... if ya can wait i would.

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