Not Your Ordinary Phone
If you’ve recently upgraded from an old flip-phone, your new iPhone has capabilities you wouldn’t think possible.
While the iPhone is an extremely capable device, its most basic purpose is that of a cell phone. Operating the phone is not that different than most other types of phones. However, there are a few noteworthy features that separate the iPhone from that trusty old flip phone.
Visual Voicemail
To check voice messages on a traditional cell phone, you need to dial a voice mailbox, pressing 1 to hear your message, then being held hostage while you wait for some long-winded message to finish before you can push some other button to delete the message. Then, you must endure the whole button pushing process all over again for all your other messages. If you need to listen to a message again, heaven help you while you navigate the voice mailbox menu.
What may be the single best improvement to the cell phone, visual voicemail eliminates the hassle in checking voicemail messages. All you voicemails appear in a list, similar to your email Inbox. You can select which voicemail you want to hear in any order you want to hear them. There is a small slider near the bottom of the page that indicates how long the message is. As the message plays, a small dot (called a playhead) moves across the slider as the message plays. To replay any part of the message, simply drag the playhead backward or forward to jump to a different point in the message.
There are many more subtle features that will make you quickly forget that old flip-phone. The iPhone nicely integrates your Contacts to the phone, which makes placing calls as simple as touching the person’s name you want to call.
If you can’t take a call, simply push the Sleep/Wake button on the very top of the iPhone and it will silence the ringing. Push the Sleep/Wake button twice quickly to send the call directly to voicemail.
When you decide not to take a call, you also have the capability to reply to an incoming call with a text message or set a reminder to call the person back.
This is only a brief overview of the phone features on the iPhone. Many options for the phone can be accessed in the Settings app on the iPhone. Open the Settings app and select Phone to modify features of the phone.