Tagged: iPhone

How to charge your iPhone in half the time

It never fails; you’re busy, not paying attention and have a meeting across town in an hour, when you notice that your iPhone is down to 15% charge on the battery. Simply plugging it in for 15 minutes before you head out the door isn’t going to give you enough charge to get you through the day.

iPhone fast chargeHere’s a little-known secret to get you the battery charge you need in half the time it would normally take.

Plug your iPhone in as you normally would, then open the Settings app and turn on Airplane mode at the top. Doing so turns off WiFi, the cellular radio, Bluetooth, pretty much everything that typically drains the battery even as it’s charging.

I’ve verified that this works, and works well. My iPhone charged in nearly half the time it would normally take.

I wish I could take credit for discovering this trick, but I found it at AlliOSNews.

Mail Pilot public preview available

Mail Pilot for Mac public preview early sign-ups are now live. On Thursday, December 5, the first batch of public previews will go out. Sign up now to be one of the first to get Mail Pilot for Mac.

Mail Pilot users can quickly manage and productively organize their inboxes with a simple, task-oriented approach, tailored for the desktop. Mail Pilot for iPhone is already available, and quite popular.

Skin your iPhone earbuds for better sound, fit and style

EarSkinz

As any iPhone user can tell you, the Apple-supplied EarPods (or earbuds if you have an iPod Touch) absolutely suck as far as fitting. Though they’ve improved greatly with each hardware update, I still can’t find anyone who doesn’t say they fall out of their ear constantly because they simply don’t fit right.

Enter EarSkinz. For $11 you can get these covers that slip on the supplied EarPods/earbuds that claim to not only fit better and add comfort, but improve the sound quality as well. And of course, the 11 color options allow you to choose one that best fits your style.

Apple’s Headphone Remote: more than just volume control

Apple Headphone remote

Though Apple’s headphones are a source of frustration to many users, for a variety of reasons, nobody can argue the usefulness of the built-in remote. At first glance, it appears to offer nothing beyond volume control. But Apple has actually built-in quite a few handy features for controlling your iPhone with it. Here are some lesser-known shortcuts.

  • Tap the center button twice and hold it down on the second tap to fast-forward through a song. To rewind through a song, tap three times and hold it down on the third tap.
  • Skip to the next song by double-tapping the center button, and tripple-tap to hear the previous song.
  • Take a photo while in the built-in Camera app by tapping the volume up button.
  • Press and hold the middle button for two seconds, then release it to ignore an incoming call (sending it to your voicemail).
  • Tap and hold the center button to activate Siri.