Following up on my last post on this subject, here are some additional tips and shortcuts that I have come across in iPhone Software 3.0. You might also want to check out this post and this post from last year regarding shortcuts in the prior version of the iPhone software because many of those shortcuts still work today.
Search, ASAP! The iPhone has long had a shortcut to bring you back to your first home screen. When you are on one of the later pages of your Home screen, press your Home button once to jump to the first page. That shortcut still works today. Additionally, with 3.0, if you press your Home button when on your first home page, the iPhone brings you right to the search screen. You could do the same thing by just swiping to get to that screen on the left, but I find it faster to press the physical button. And when you are on the search screen, you can press the Home button again to get right back to the first home screen.
Ellipses. I recently wrote about how you can hold down the hyphen key for a second or two to have the option to make an em dash. There is a similar shortcut for and ellipses. You can always just type the period three times ... for a makeshift ellipses, but if you want to make a proper ellipses with the dots even closer together, you can now hold down the period for a second or two and a menu will pop up that allows you to insert a single character ellipses, such as …
E-mail pictures at highest quality. If you take a picture with your iPhone and then tap the icon on the bottom left of the photo, the iPhone gives you the option to E-mail the photo. That button makes it easy to do so, but note that the iPhone will automatically scale down the photo to 800 x 600 if you do so. To send the highest quality version of the photo, go to the camera roll and hold down your finger on the thumbnail of the photo until the Copy menu pops up, which you can tap to copy that one picture. (Or alternatively, tap the icon at the bottom left of the camera roll, and then tap multiple pictures that you want to send and then tap the copy button at the bottom to copy them all at once.) Then go into an e-mail, and paste the photo(s) into the body of the e-mail. This will send the photo at full resolution, which is 2048 x 1536 on an iPhone 3GS, and is 1600 x 1200 on an iPhone 3G. Most of the time that I send a picture via e-mail on my iPhone, I'm just looking to send a "hey take a quick look at this" type of e-mail so I don't really mind the scaled down 800 x 600 photo, but if you want to send the highest possible quality version, this is how. (Thanks to Jon Martin and his Geek Stuff website for this tip, and to Daring Fireball for the link.) Note that pictures in your iPhone's Photos app that were synced to your iPhone from your computer are already scaled down (such as 640 x 426 format), which is just a slightly higher resolution than the iPhone's 480 x 320 screen, so it doesn't much matter whether you let the iPhone e-mail the photo directly or if you copy-and-paste into an e-mail. Either way, you will be sending a scaled down version of the original picture. So this tip only makes a difference for pictures that you take using the iPhone that are still in your camera roll.
Hold on links. In Safari, if you hold your finger down on a link, you will get three options: (1) open the link (which is the same as just tapping it), (2) open in a new page, a handy way to look at the linked item but keep your current page, and (3) copy the link URL. Very useful.
Share contacts. There is a new "share contact" button at the bottom of each individual contact on the iPhone. If you tap it, it loads the contact info into a vCard and attaches it to an e-mail, which you can then send to one or more friends. You could even share yourself -- make a nice contact entry for yourself with all of your addresses and numbers, and then send it to your friends. (Thanks to Ernie Svenson for this tip.)
Share text messages. You can now forward an individual text message. Just tap the edit button and tap on the text message you want to forward. You'll be given the option to delete that individual message or forward it. The message arrives without any indication that it's being forwarded so you'd have to alert the recipient of that fact in a previous text message. And, obviously, this process allows you to delete individual text messages, which I don't believe was an option before. (Thanks to Ernie Svenson for this tip.)
Flick to select. Apple has done a very nice job implementing cut, copy and paste. One little detail that I noticed is in the text selection. Double tap on a word and you will see the lines with blue dots indicating the end of the selection. I'm sure that you know that you can tap and drag a blue dot to extend the selection, but one neat feature is that you can just flick a dot in a direction and the dot will keep moving until it hits the end of the word. This shortcut can make it faster when you are selecting text.
Shake to undo. [UPDATE] I have previously noted that shake to undo is a feature of the 3.0 software, and I should have included it in this list of shortcuts. Thanks to Jerry for reminding me by posting a comment to this original post. In my prior post on 3.0 shortcuts and tips, I noted that I personally don't like the shake to shuffle feature. But shake to undo can be a time saver, not to mention it is sort of fun.
If you have any other iPhone Software 3.0 tips or shortcuts, please post a comment or send me an e-mail so that we can share the tips or shortcuts with others.
