Isn’t it exciting to find out that your iPhone holds more features than you realise and how fun it is to start using something new. At MGT Design we have looked into some handy hidden iPhone features which you can use to your advantage. From a useful magnifying glass to sending someone some balloons to celebrate their Birthday there is now even more that you can do with your Apple iPhone using the latest iOS 10.
Special iMessage Effects
It’s time to get excited about the special effects available to use in iMessage, perfect for adding a special touch to each iMessage that you send. Once you write your message out, hold down the ‘send’ arrow until the ‘send with effect’ text comes up. Here you can either send your message in a way for it to appear on the recipients phone for example with large text or with invisible ink. If you slide to the left you can send your message with a special screen such as with balloons – perfect for a Birthday text message, confetti for celebrations or even a heart – perfect for Valentine’s Day coming up.
Announced Calls
You can already set up different ring tones for each contact so that you know who is calling, however with the latest iOS 10 your iPhone can announce to you who is calling so that you know who it is without having to look at the phone screen. This is perfect for if you are in a different room or even driving and cannot answer, at least if you miss the call you know that you can call that particular person back when you can. You can set this up by going into Settings, then Phone and select Announce Calls.
Bedtime
Get a better nights sleep with the Bedtime App. You can find Bedtime within the Clock App and instead of setting an alarm you can set how many hours sleep you wish to have and in the morning you will be woken up with an alarm which gradually gets louder until you wake up being more natural. It is usually recommended that you have 7-8 hours sleep per night and with the Bedtime App you can monitor how many hours sleep you are getting per week. This can also be linked to the Health App which will give you an average of how many hours sleep you get each week.
Intelligent Photos
You can now search within the photo section of your iPhone. This means that if you have thousands of photos you can simply search for something like ‘Cats’ and this will bring up all of your photos which have cats in them. You have to have your location settings turned on for this and that way if you were to search for ‘London’ or ‘New York’ it would bring up all relevant photos.
Save Data and Battery
Save your valuable data and your iPhone battery by turning off Apps that run in the background of your run using up your mobile data. This is particularly useful when you are out and about or even abroad on either business or holiday. This means that the Apps that you have downloaded on your phone can only be used when connected to Wifi. If there is an App you wish to use whilst you are on the go then you can keep that particular App turned on for mobile data use.
Scheduled Do Not Disturb
Many of us put our phones on silent and then mid morning realise that we have forgotten to turn the silent setting off and have a dozen missed calls. On your iPhone you can schedule the Do Not Disturb setting. This is perfect for having set for bedtime. You can allow your Favourites to still call through or you can block calls altogether. You can schedule the do not disturb by going into your Settings and then scroll down to Do Not Disturb.
Magnifier
Turn your iPhone into a handy Magnifier to use when words are a bit hard to read or if you are being lazy and want to see what something says across the other side of the room. If you go into Settings, General and then Accessibility you will find the magnifier option. Turn this on and then tap the home button three times to open the Magnifier to use. You can capture the image and zoom in and out to see what it says with slightly more zoom than the camera would give you.
The Spirit Level
Hidden within the Compass App is a handy tool many of us could use when doing a bit of DIY. Open up the Compass App and slide to the left to reveal the Spirit Level which you can use to make sure that shelves, tables and units are straight using the iPhones accelerometer.
