But first let’s focus on the four awesome handheld devices your iPhone is the day you take it out of the box. In addition to being a decent cellular telephone, the iPhone is a gorgeous widescreen video player, a fantastic 8- or 12-megapixel camera/camcorder system, as well as a tiny-yet-powerful Internet communications device.
In this chapter, we offer a gentle introduction to all four devices that make up your iPhone, plus overviews of its revolutionary hardware and software features.
WHAT’S IN THE BOX?
Somehow, we think you’ve already opened the elegant box that the iPhone came in. But if you didn’t, here’s what you can expect to find inside:
EarPods (all but iPhone 12 models): Use them for music, videos, and, yes, phone calls.
Lightning–to–USB cable: Use this handy cable to sync or charge your iPhone. You can plug the USB connector into your PC or Macintosh to sync or into the included USB power adapter. The cable was Lightning-to-USB-A until this year. The cable included with all iPhone 12 models is Lightning-to-USB-C. (If your computer doesn’t have a USB-C port, inexpensive adapters are available from Apple and other vendors such as Amazon.com.)
USB power adapter (all but iPhone 12 models): Use this adapter to recharge your iPhone from a standard AC power outlet.
Some Apple logo decals: Of course.
A quick start guide or an iPhone info sheet or both: Not much to it. You see the names of the buttons, how to turn on the phone, and where to learn more and get support. We saved you the time of looking; you can learn more at www.apple.com/iphone and get help at www.apple.com/support/iphone. You’re welcome.
SIM eject tool: Included with some (but not all) new iPhones. Didn’t get one or lost yours? No problem. Use a straightened paper clip or safety pin to remove your SIM card. (See Chapter 16 for more on the SIM card.)
iPhone: You were starting to worry. Yes, the iPhone itself is also in the box.
The Big Picture
The iPhone has many best-of-class features, but perhaps its most unusual feature is the lack of a physical keyboard or stylus. Instead, it has a super-high-resolution (ranging from 326 pixels per inch on the iPhone 7, 8, and 11 to an astonishing 476 pixels per inch on the new iPhone 12 mini) touchscreen that you operate using a pointing device you’re already intimately familiar with: your finger.
And what a display it is. We venture that you’ve never seen a more beautiful screen on a handheld device in your life.
The iPhone’s built-in sensors also still knock our socks off. An accelerometer detects when you rotate the device from portrait to landscape mode and adjusts what’s on the display accordingly. A proximity sensor detects when the iPhone gets near your face, so it can turn off the display to save power and prevent accidental touches by your cheek. A light sensor adjusts the display’s brightness in response to the current ambient lighting situation. The iPhone even has a gyroscope for advanced motion sensing and GPS sensors so your phone can determine where in the world you are. Our favorite example of motion sensing is that our iPhones rarely ask if we want to join a Wi-Fi network when we’re in a moving car. That’s a smart smartphone.
In this section, we take a brief look at some of the iPhone’s features, broken down by product category.
The iPhone as a phone and a digital camera or camcorder
On the phone side, the iPhone synchronizes with the contacts and calendars on your Mac or PC, as well as contacts and events on iCloud, Google, Yahoo!, Outlook.com, and Microsoft Exchange. It includes a full-featured QWERTY virtual keyboard, which makes typing text easier than ever before — for some folks. Granted, the virtual keyboard takes a bit of time to get used to. But we think that many of you eventually will be whizzing along at a much faster pace than you thought possible on a mobile keyboard of this type.
The camera in your iPhone is paired with iOS 14’s improved Camera and Photos apps, so taking and managing digital photos and videos on your iPhone is a pleasure rather than the nightmare it can be on other phones. Plus, you can automatically synchronize iPhone photos and videos with the digital photo library on your Mac or PC.
The iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max cameras are the best yet, with all the features of the preceding Pro generation cameras, including autofocus with focus pixels to help prevent out-of-focus pictures. And all models available today have one of the greatest features ever: optical image stabilization, which uses data from the processor, gyroscope, and motion coprocessor to determine camera motion when you’re shooting, and then compensates for your shaky hands or low light. Bottom line: All iPhone 12 models shoot better low-light photos than previous iPhones, and iPhone 12 Pro models shoot the best low-light photos and videos yet.
Finally, don’t miss the Live Photos feature (all current iPhone models), which captures a bit of video before and after the still image. This brings images to life when viewed, and it’s as easy as ever to add effects — such as loop, bounce, and our favorite, long exposure — making Live Photos perhaps the coolest iPhone camera feature since, well, whatever we called the coolest iPhone camera feature in a previous edition.
Another of our favorite phone accouterments is visual voicemail. (Try saying that three times fast.) This feature lets you see a list of voicemail messages and choose which ones to listen to or delete without being forced to deal with every message in your voice mailbox in sequential order. Now, that’s handy!
Finally, all iPhone models include Siri, an intelligent voice-controlled assistant that understands what you tell him or her (most of the time). We say “him or her” because you can choose the optional man’s voice for Siri (see Chapter 5). Regardless of which gender you choose, Siri just keeps getting better at figuring out what you mean and determining which (if any) iPhone app should be used to find the right answer. And, like a real personal assistant, Siri replies in a natural sounding human voice. Furthermore, he or she has become even smarter in recent years with proactive assistance, which provides the most relevant information and suggestions at a particular moment and place using on-device learning, which helps Siri deliver a more personalized experience based on your usage of Safari, News, Mail, Messages, and other apps.
One more thing: Both flavors of Siri — male and female — take dictation!
If you’ve tried voice control before, forget everything you know and give Siri a try. We think you’ll be as impressed as we are (as long as you have a good Internet connection when you try it — Siri can be close to useless if your connection is slow) — and are in a relatively quiet environment or are using a headset.
We’ve mentioned just the highlights of the iPhone’s superb set of features. But because we still have the entire book ahead of us, we’ll put the extended coverage on hold for now (phone pun intended).
The iPhone as an iPod
Do you remember when iPods were all the rage? We agree with the late Steve Jobs on this one: The iPhone is a better iPod than any iPod Apple ever made. (Okay, we can quibble about the iPod touch and the iPad, as well as wanting more storage, but you know what we mean.) You can enjoy all your existing media content — music, audiobooks, audio and video podcasts, iTunes U courses, music videos, television shows, and movies — on the iPhone’s gorgeous high-resolution color display, which is bigger, brighter, and richer than any iPod display before it.
Bottom line: If you can get the content — be it video, audio, or whatever — into the Music or TV apps (macOS Catalina or Big Sur) or