Phone Hacks | iPhone Tricks and Tips

Apple ended up having a bit of a rough end to its 2018. Unfortunately for the company, the start of 2019 hasn’t been all rainbows and butterflies, either . Yesterday saw some pretty explosive news. The company made a public statement warning investors, analysts, and rubberneckers that the first fiscal quarter was going to be much, much weaker than previously expected due to simply not selling enough iPhones. Apple had a variety of reasons why people weren’t upgrading, including a rough upgrade market in greater China, weak sales in developing markets, and even its $29 battery replacement program. So Apple is doomed! Doomed ! Well, unless you look at all the other things that Apple is still doing very well. For instance, Apple said that iPhone activations in the United States and Canada set a record this holiday season . And now, just today, Apple confirmed that the App Store had a record-breaking holiday (again), and saw the single highest sales in a single day ($322 millio...

The year-in-reviews are flooding in (unless you are an Apple Music subscriber and don’t use a separate app!), along with looking back at all the things the company launched over the last 12 months. Was this year as exciting as the last? Maybe! We might not have gotten a brand new iPhone design like last year and the iPhone X, but we did get the colorful options with the iPhone XR. More than that, though, Apple’s other iPhone manages to actually feature worthwhile specs across the board without shoving a huge price tag in customers’ faces. We did also get new Macs with the Mac mini and the brand new, redesigned MacBook Air. And then what feels like forever ago we finally saw Apple launch its first smart speaker, the HomePod. And then there’s the sixth-generation iPad with Apple Pencil support, which is actually a really nice device in the hand and also doesn’t break the bank. The MacBook Pro saw itself a nice upgrade in 2018, and Apple launched new software...

2018 is an “S upgrade” year, which means that the changes from last year’s flagship, the iPhone X, are going to be pretty minimal in this year’s new models. But like years prior, that’s not a bad thing. I’ve been using the iPhone XS Max as my daily driver now since last Friday, starting in the late afternoon. I’ve already penned some first impressions of the handset, and I can safely say that now, days later, I actually like the phone even more than I did after just taking it out of the box. There is a lot to like here and that’s not just because of the bigger display — even though that has a lot to do with it. The display is where we need to start, because it’s gigantic. At 6.5 inches it’s one of the bigger options out there, which, in my opinion, isn’t worth writing home about by itself. Just having a big screen is not something to be praised for. The fact that the bezels have been reduced is a positive thing, be...

iPhone Day means incessantly refreshing a tracking page until the delivery truck finally arrives at your front door. But then the wait’s over and you’ve finally got the thing you’ve been waiting hours, no, a week , for ! It’s been a long day of waiting, but the iPhone XS Max in Space Gray that I ordered a week ago — with only a few issues getting there — is finally here. The FedEx driver was pretty excited about the whole ordeal, too, asking me if I was “getting a new phone” today. As soon as he left I dug into the box, grabbed the phone, and checked out what Apple had put together. Surprise, surprise, but we’ve got an iPhone. I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. The iPhone is a solid device, and considering we’re building upon the foundation that the exceptional (even with the notch) iPhone X put down last year, there’s a lot to like. However, at the same time, if you did pick up the iPhone X last year, or even t...

Apple launched three new iPhones earlier this month, with two of those models sitting at the top of the pyramid due to just a few changes in their specs compared to the third, less expensive model. While the iPhone XS and the iPhone XS Max boast price tags that will see buyers forking over $1,000 or more, the iPhone XR scales things back with a price tag that starts at $749. The top-of-the-line model, the one outfitted with 256GB of built-in storage, actually retails for just $899, making it the only new iPhone model not to reach the $1,000 mark. And the best part is that the iPhone XR isn’t really that much different from the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, save for some important differences. Which is why when the reviews for the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max started circulating yesterday, I wasn’t too surprised that a lot of them were suggesting some folks should just wait for the iPhone XR, rather than opt for one of the newer, more expensive options. This is definitely an ...

Earlier today, Apple officially released iOS 12 into the wild. With the new software comes plenty of new features, including Siri Shortcuts . Siri Shortcuts means that iOS 12 users can use just their voice, and Siri, to handle specific functions within Apple’s own primary apps, as well as a variety of different third-party options. That means you can use some apps to tell Siri to snap a photo, or take a note. With so many options out there, we chose a few to be aware of as of day one. Of course, there will be plenty of additional options in the days and weeks ahead, so keep an eye out if your favorite apps add support down the road as well. Halide Using a voice control to quickly snap a photo is pretty straightforward, and now, thanks to Siri Shortcuts, you can achieve that goal. What’s better is that Halide, one of the best camera apps available on the App Store, now supports the feature as well. They showed off the feature in a tweet today, which you can check out below. ...