The iPhone Mom

I’ve got ten easy tweaks that I’ve done to make my iPhone work for me and my mom life. Today I’m going to list the first five.

1. I got rid of the “Sent from my iPhone” message that shows up by default at the end of every email sent out from the iPhone. Did you know that was there?? You can customize what goes at the end of your emails in Settings. Tap the settings button, then “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”. Scroll down until you see “Signature”. Tap that and type in whatever you want to say. My signature is simply my first name but maybe I’ll shake that up one of these days.

2. I customized the apps that show up in the bar at the bottom of the screen. The ones that will be there when you purchase your phone are Phone, Mail, Safari and iPod. You can’t delete any of these factory installed apps but you can move them around. To do this hold down on the app icon in the bar that you’d like to move. Wait for it to start wiggling and then drag it to it’s new spot. Now you’ve got a free space at the bottom of your screen. Tap and hold on the app you want to move and drag it down to the bottom space. Because this bar shows up on every iPhone screen I like to keep the bottom space reserved for apps I use constantly. As of today they are Phone, Mail, Edibles and iPod. Although I’m not using Edibles as often as I should, it’s mostly there to induce guilt.

3. I arrange the rest of my apps according to what they’re used for and how often they’re needed. The apps I use most frequently are on my home screen. The next few screens are for apps that I use less frequently. Then I’ve got the ones for my kids grouped together. I’ve found that if I do this my kids are less likely to rearrange the apps themselves. Before iTunes 9 came along rearranging apps was a big, fat pain. Now that you can do it within iTunes it’s much easier. This link will take you to my previous explanation of how to make that work for you.

4. Since my kids are on my iPhone fairly regularly I’ve set up some restrictions as to what shows up. I’ve gotten rid of You Tube and disabled the installing of apps from the phone. I’ve also set up ratings for the music and podcasts that are allowed to be played. I don’t have restrictions on the ratings for TV Shows and Movies but that’s only because the videos on my phone are mostly for my kids anyway. If I did have a movie that I didn’t want them to see I’d set up the ratings and simply disable it when I wanted to watch. You can also set ratings for the apps allowed on your phone. When I originally did this I set it to not allow apps for 17+. I’m embarrassed to admit that I then spent over an hour trying to reinstall the Facebook app because it had disappeared. I’d download it and install it but it was nowhere to be found! It finally dawned on me that the app wasn’t showing up because it was rated 17+. So learn from me! Some apps have that rating because they have the potential to display material rated 17+ and they’ll be blocked whether they ever show that content or not. Because of this I don’t have restrictions set up for my apps. I wrote a post explaining more about Restrictions when the new OS 3.0 originally came out.

5. If your kids are on your iPhone at all then you know how quickly they can drain a battery! To conserve battery life you can turn off blue tooth, push notifications, and Wi-Fi, lower the brightness of your screen and lower the time until your Auto-Lock kicks in. I plug my phone in every night and generally about halfway through the day too. It is my only phone so I’ve got to keep it charged. Read more of my thoughts on this here.

Come back tomorrow for part two of my list!