5 features you may not know about iPhone OS 3.0

July 5th, 2009

Connect your Mac to internet with your iPhone
As you have probably already heard, the new iPhone OS 3.0 has tethering capabilities. Almost everywhere besides the US this option is already available, but here, the motherland of the iPhone, AT&T simply fell short, not being ready to deploy this feature to the public.
Luckily somebody managed to find the right settings in order to activate this function for everybody.
Just browse this page with Safari in your iPhone and click this link.

AutoFill to quickly fill up forms
By default this feature is turned off, but if go into Settings > Safari > AutoFill you can turn on the AutoFill feature and also choose what contact informations you want to use.

Copy a link or open it in a new page
This isn’t completely a new feature, but I’m sure a lot of people didn’t know that holding down (can you hold down a touch screen???) your finger on a link in Safari you can decide to open it in a new page or copy it for later uses.

Force-quit a frozen application
I’m pretty sure this trick was possible even with earlier iPhone OS but I just found it out so here you go:

Hold down the power and home button until “Slide to Turn Off” appears
Let go of both buttons
Press and hold ONLY the home button for 5-6 seconds

Call your mom
Yes, finally I can say “Call my mom” and my iPhone will call my mother.
When you create (or edit) a contact you can click on “add field” and select nickname. And while before it was kinda useless for me now I can use it to create shortcuts to call people. So if I put “my mom” as nickname for my mother’s contact, using the voice control I can literally tell my phone to call my mom.

http://Morewillie.com Willie

Very insightful post haha can say I never comment!
http://Morewillie.com Willie

Very insightful post haha can say I never comment!
http://www.dan-london.com Dan London

Has there been any word on AT&T charging huge fees for people using that trick to tether thier phone to their MAC?

http://www.davidedicillo.com Davide

Not that I know. I used that before the official release of the 3.0 and I wasn’t charge. I actually think that their problems is that they didn’t place any system to account the tethering traffic yet.

http://www.dan-london.com Dan London

Has there been any word on AT&T charging huge fees for people using that trick to tether thier phone to their MAC?

http://www.davidedicillo.com Davide

Not that I know. I used that before the official release of the 3.0 and I wasn’t charge. I actually think that their problems is that they didn’t place any system to account the tethering traffic yet.

http://www.TaylorBarr.com Taylor Barr

Thanks for the post.

Watch out though- with the tethering it could exceed your data plan pretty fast if your not careful. I would advise to use caution when issuing that approach.

Thanks,
Taylor Barr

http://www.davidedicillo.com Davide

Should the traffic being unlimited or anyway something like several gigs? I’m not planning on using tethering as my main internet connection, but it’s nice to know that if you need it you have it

http://www.TaylorBarr.com Taylor Barr

Thanks for the post.

Watch out though- with the tethering it could exceed your data plan pretty fast if your not careful. I would advise to use caution when issuing that approach.

Thanks,
Taylor Barr

http://www.davidedicillo.com Davide

Should the traffic being unlimited or anyway something like several gigs? I’m not planning on using tethering as my main internet connection, but it’s nice to know that if you need it you have it

Charlie

You’re obviously a new iPhone user. These are all 3.0 updates (except the voice dialing), NOT 3GS updates. Any 3G can do those first 3, and the 4th is just bad bad bad advice. Doing that can put you in Recovery mode and force you to plug back into iTunes. Just hold down the Home button to quit an app. Oh and RTFM, these are ALL publicly known features.

http://www.davidedicillo.com Davide

@ Charlie:

Thanks for pointing out the these are iPhone OS 3.0 features, I should have been more clear in the post title.
Also I know that these are all publicly known features, and I’m glad you knew them already, but you would be surprised to see how many people don’t know “publicly known things”.

Charlie

You’re obviously a new iPhone user. These are all 3.0 updates (except the voice dialing), NOT 3GS updates. Any 3G can do those first 3, and the 4th is just bad bad bad advice. Doing that can put you in Recovery mode and force you to plug back into iTunes. Just hold down the Home button to quit an app. Oh and RTFM, these are ALL publicly known features.

http://www.davidedicillo.com Davide

@ Charlie:

Thanks for pointing out the these are iPhone OS 3.0 features, I should have been more clear in the post title.
Also I know that these are all publicly known features, and I’m glad you knew them already, but you would be surprised to see how many people don’t know “publicly known things”.

http://www.matthewhmaschler.com Matt

Davide

Thanks for all this great info. Although the previous user complained that this info was “publicly known” many people, including me did not know them. I went from original, to 3G and then 3GS so I didnt stop to research all the new bells and whistles, thanks for doing so.
http://www.matthewhmaschler.com Matt

Davide

Thanks for all this great info. Although the previous user complained that this info was “publicly known” many people, including me did not know them. I went from original, to 3G and then 3GS so I didnt stop to research all the new bells and whistles, thanks for doing so.

Davide Di Cillo