Just what can your iPhone do?

When my husband gave me an iPhone 4S, I was so eager to use it that I couldn’t be bothered to read the manual. Here are 10 tips that I’ve picked up that you can put to use right away — no manual necessary.

1. Do you wish you could use bold and italics in your emails? You can. Just highlight the word or words that you want to modify and then tap the right arrow to get to the B/I option.
2. When I texted my husband “That was the worst poopy diaper, ever!” while he was in a meeting, he discovered the hide SMS preview option. To turn previews off, go to general > notifications > messages and turn off “show preview.”
3. If you screen calls as I do, you know that the phone seems to ring forever while you wait for it to go to voicemail. To silence a call and send it directly to voicemail, simply tap the sleep button.
4. Have you ever gotten a funny text that you want to save for posterity? By simultaneously pressing your home and sleep buttons, you can grab a quick screenshot of whatever is on your screen, which you can then find in your camera roll.
5. Kids rarely stand still and won’t patiently wait for you to fumble to get to your camera. Capture that shot by simply double-clicking your home button for immediate access to your camera.
6. Do you find yourself typing the same phrases over and again? Set up shortcuts for your commonly used phrases by going to settings > general > keyboard and looking for shortcuts. Enter the phrase you’d like to shorten, and the next time you type that shortcut, it will automatically appear.
7. Did you know you can turn your iBooks into audio books? To try this feature, go to settings > general > accessibility and turn on VoiceOver. Then open a book in iBooks and tap the first line. Swipe down the page with two fingers and your iPhone will begin reading to you. You’ll most likely want to turn this feature off when not using it for audio books, but it’s handy when you need it.
8. Does it seem like your iPhone is slower than it should be? You can easily view which apps are eating up your storage and delete accordingly. Simply go to settings > general > usage to see a list of all of your apps and exactly how much space they’re taking up. (For suggestions on fun apps to download, check out our lists of favorite iPhone apps.)
9. To quickly view your weekly calendar, open your calendar and turn your phone on its side. Scroll up and down to see the hours of the day, left to right to move through the weeks.
10. Did you know that one tap of the status bar across the top of your phone scrolls you all the way to the top of a page? No more scrolling forever to get back to the beginning. This feature gets tons of use in my Twitter and Facebook apps.

More on your iPhone

iPhone camera apps: Take and edit great pictures
iPhone apps for the fashionista
5 Ultra-slim iPhone cases