5 things you probably didn’t know your iPhone could do for you

The iPhone is one of the most popular smartphones in the telecommunications market at the moment. While many users have already mastered the phone’s touch screen keyboard and a few other tips and tricks, there are hundreds of convenient and timesaving shortcuts for the iPhone that exist. Here’s a collection of the most important ones you should know:

1. Increase text size for apps
While it was normal to be able to adjust text size on the phone, there is now a capability for app developers to be supported for ‘dynamic text size’. This means that for any app that you use, you can set a larger type size.

– Go to Settings > General > Text Size

– Drag the slider to your preferred size.

One of the apps that supports this is the Mail app, so when you’ve changed text size, open it to see the font size of your emails displaying as larger than they were.

2. Make text easy to read by changing contrast

While we are on the subject of typeface, Apple’s default typeface is thin and for many, hard to read. We can make a quick change to make the type bold.

– Go to Settings > General > Accessibility

– Tap on Increase Contrast to toggle it to ‘On’

– Scroll to Bold and move the slider to ‘On’ (Green)

– When a message pops up saying that your iPhone will restart for changes to take effect, select ‘Continue’ and allow your iPhone to reboot.

After reboot, browse your iPhone, you’ll notice that the typeface is bold and this should make it easier to read.

3. Typing shortcuts

If you use some long words in emails or conversations, and some URLs more often than others (like visiting our website!), you can make a shortcut for whenever you type it next.

– Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Add New Shortcut

– Type your phrase in and the shortcut key. For example, if your phrase is startsat60.com then your shortcut could be SAS.

4. Get your phone to read text for you

You can have your phone read text for you, and this is especially handy when using it for recipes, DIY things or something similar.

– Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Speech

– Activate Speak Selection.

Any text you highlight will have the option to Copy and Speak, and selecting Speak will have Siri reading your selection.

5. Use your data frugally 

You can control where your phone’s data is being used, by a cellular data management tool. With this tool, you decide which apps get to use cellular data, and which apps load only over Wi-Fi, therefore controlling the excessive use of data by data-hungry apps.

– Go to Settings > Cellular

– Slide the button next to an app to disable phone data usage by the app.

Do you, your friends and family use the iPhone? Have you tried any of these before?