How To Use iPhone : To launch an app on your iPhone, simply tap its icon. To close it, press the iPhone’s Home button – though as we’ll see, the app may continue to run in the background.

Fast app switching

If your iPhone has iOS 4 or later, then double-clicking the Home button when your phone is in use reveals a panel showing your recently used applications. This is extremely handy, enabling you to quickly switch between apps without having to return to the Home Screen.

TIP If you own an older iPhone. double-tapping the Home button may reveal the Music controls or your Favorites contacts. if you’d like to change this, look for the option within Settings > General > Home.

Swiping to the left across this tray reveals the next four most recently used apps, and so on. Tapping an app’s icon swiftly switches you into that app, and for most apps you’ll find that you are back in exactly the same place you were last time you used it.

Should you want to remove apps from the recently used panel to restart them properly, tap and hold the icons until they all start to jiggle about; then tap the red icon of the apps you want rid of. Click the Home button when you are done. This process does not. remove the app from the iPhone all together: only from this list.

TIP The iPhone allows multitasking, which means apps can perform tasks in the background while you get on with something else in another app. However, Apple has limited the types of features that can run in the background in order to preserve battery life and stop the phone grinding to a halt. Background functions supported include music playback, receiving VolP calls, location awareness and various others.

Switching to the Music app

Swiping to the right across the recently used app tray reveals music controls and an icon that gives you quick access to the Music app. To the left of these playback controls there’s a special button for locking the iPhone’s screen orientation to portrait – handy when trying to use reading or web-browsing apps in bed. When the screen orientation is locked, this button displays a padlock in its centre.

.

.

Web apps & webclips

Downloading apps is one way to fill up your Home Screen. with icons; the other is to create simple bookmark icons – so-called “webclips” ­that point to your favourite websites or web apps (see box overleaf). These can be handy as they allow you to access your most frequently viewed websites without opening up Safari and manually tapping in an address or searching through your bookmarks.

To create an icon for a website, simply visit the page in Safari and press + (or the icon on some older iOS versions). Select ‘Add to Home Screen” and choose a name for the icon – the shorter the better, as anything longer than around ten characters won’t dis­play in full.

Improving website icons

When you add a webpage to your Home Screen, the iPhone will use that website’s iPhone icon, if one has been specified. If the site doesp’t have an iPhone icon, an icon will be created based on how the page was being displayed when you clicked +. To make the best-looking and most readable icons, zoom in first on the logo of the website in question.

If you’re not happy with the icon you get, it is possible – if a bit of a hassle – to create your own icons for those websites. The process involves creating an icon (or grabbing one from elsewhere), uploading it to the web, and then using a special bookmark to point the iPhone to this icon before you hit +. To grab the special bookmark and get more details.

See also:

• New iPad Features | More Pixels Than HDTV
• Apple iPhone 4S Review | Buyer Guide
• How To Use iCloud | A New User Guide
• How To Use SIRI | iPhone 4S User Guide
• How To Use Facetime on iPad | Help And Tips