I Called Her Again Today and Left a Message to Call Me Back Got No Reply

Chapter 4. Voicemail, Texting, & Other Telephone Tricks

Once you lot've savored the exhilaration of making phone calls on the iPhone, you're prepare to graduate to some of its fancier tricks: voicemail, text letters, AT&T features like Caller ID and Call Forwarding, and a Bluetooth headset or auto kit.

Visual Voicemail

On the iPhone, you don't dial in to check for answering-motorcar letters people have left for you. You don't enter a password. You don't sit through some Ambien-addled recorded lady saying, "You take…17…letters. To hear your messages, press ane. When you take finished, yous may hang upward…."

Instead, whenever somebody leaves you lot a bulletin, the phone wakes up, and a discover on the screen lets you know who the bulletin is from. You also hear a sound, unless yous've turned that choice off (Effulgence) or turned on the silencer switch.

That's your cue to tap Abode→Phone→Voicemail. There you see all your messages in a tidy chronological list. (The list shows the callers' names if they're in your Contacts list; otherwise it shows their numbers.) You can listen to them in any guild—you lot're not forced to mind to 3 long-winded friends earlier discovering that there'south an urgent message from your boss. Information technology'due south a game-changer.

Setup

To access your voicemail, tap Phone on the Home screen, then tap Voicemail on the Phone screen.

The very beginning time you visit this screen, the iPhone prompts you to make up a numeric countersign for your voicemail account—don't worry, yous'll never have to enter it again—and to record a "Leave me a bulletin" greeting.

You have two options for the approachable greeting.

• Default . If you lot're microphone-shy, or if yous're famous and you don't want stalkers and fans calling just to hear your famous vocalism, then employ this option. Information technology's a prerecorded, somewhat uptight female phonation that says, "Your call has been forwarded to an automatic phonation message arrangement. 212-661-7837 is not available." Beep !

• Custom . This option lets y'all tape your ain voice proverb, for case, "You've reached my iPhone. You may begin drooling at the tone." Tap Record, hold the iPhone to your head, say your line, and then tap Stop.

  Check how it sounds past tapping Play.

Then just expect for your fans to kickoff leaving you messages!

Using Visual Voicemail

In the voicemail list, a bluish dot indicates a message yous haven't yet played.

Tip

You tin can work through your messages fifty-fifty when you're out of AT&T cellular range—on a airplane, for instance—because the recordings are stored on the iPhone itself.

At that place are only ii tricky things to acquire nigh Visual Voicemail:

• Tap a message's proper noun twice to play it . That's a deviation from the usual iPhone Way, where just one tap does the fob. In Visual Voicemail, tapping a message only selects it and activates the Call back and Delete buttons at the bottom of the screen. You have to tap twice to start playback.

• Plough on Speaker Phone first . As the name Visual Voicemail suggests, you're looking at your voicemail list—which means yous're not belongings the phone up to your caput. The first time people try using Visual Voicemail, therefore, they generally hear nothing!

  That's a expert argument for hitting the Speaker button before tapping messages that y'all want to play back. That way, you can hear the playback and continue looking over the listing. (Of grade, if privacy is an issue, you tin as well double-tap a message and and then quickly whip the telephone upward to your ear.)

  Annotation

  If you're listening through the earbuds or a Bluetooth earpiece or motorcar kit, of course, y'all hear the message playing back through that . If you really want to mind through the iPhone'due south speaker instead, tap Sound, and so Speaker Phone. (You switch back the same way.)

Everything else almost Visual Voicemail is straightforward. The buttons do exactly what they say:

• Delete . The Voicemail listing scrolls with a flick of your finger, but y'all still might want to keep the list manageable by deleting one-time messages. To do that, tap a message and then tap Delete. The message disappears instantly. (You're not asked to confirm.)

  Tip

  The iPhone hangs on to old messages for xxx days—fifty-fifty ones y'all've deleted. To listen to deleted messages that are withal on the phone, scroll to the lesser of the list and tap Deleted Messages.

  On the Deleted screen, yous tin Undelete a message that you actually don't want to lose however (that is, move it back to the Voicemail screen) or tap Clear All to erase these letters for good.

• Retrieve . Tap a message so tap Call up to return the call. Very absurd—you never fifty-fifty encounter the person's phone number.

• Rewind, Fast Forward . Elevate the lilliputian white ball in the scroll bar (beneath the list) to skip backward or forward in the message. It's a great way to replay something you didn't take hold of the outset time.

  

• Greeting . Tap this button (upper-left corner) to record your voicemail greeting.

• Call Details . Tap the push button to open the Info screen for the message that was left for you. Here you'll detect out the engagement and time of the bulletin.

If it was left by somebody who'southward in your Contacts list, you can see which of that person'south phone numbers the call came from (indicated in blue type), plus a five-pointed star if that number is in your Favorites list. Oh, and you can add together this person to your Favorites list at this point past tapping Add to Favorites.

If the caller's number isn't in Contacts, then yous're shown the urban center and land where that person's telephone is registered. And you'll exist offered a Create New Contact button and an Add together to Existing Contact push button, so you tin can store it for time to come reference.

In both cases, you lot also have the choice to return the telephone call (right from the Info screen) or fire off a text message.

Dialing in for Letters

Gross and pre-iPhonish though it may audio, y'all can also dial in for your messages from some other phone. (Hey, information technology could happen.)

To practice that, dial your iPhone's number. Wait for the voicemail system to answer.

Equally your own voicemail greeting plays, dial *, your voicemail password, and then #. Y'all'll hear the Uptight AT&T Lady announce the first "skipped" message (actually the kickoff unplayed message), so she'll start playing them for you.

Subsequently you hear each message, she'll offer you the following options (but you don't accept to look for her to denote them):

• To delete the message, press 7.

• To save information technology, printing 9.

• To replay it, printing iv.

• To hear the engagement, time, and number the message came from, printing 5. (You don't hear the lady give you these last two options until you press "goose egg for more options"—just they piece of work anytime you press them.)

Tip

If this whole Visual Voicemail thing freaks yous out, you can as well dial in for messages the sometime-fashioned way, right from the iPhone. Open the Keypad (Vocalization Dialing (iPhone 3GS)) and hold downwards the one central, merely as though it'south a speed-dial central on any normal phone.

After a moment, the phone connects to AT&T; you're asked for your password, and then the messages begin to play back, simply equally described above.

Text Letters (SMS)

"Texting," as the young whippersnappers telephone call information technology, was huge in Asia and Europe before it began catching on in the United States. These days, however, it'due south increasingly pop, especially amongst teenagers and twentysomethings.

SMS stands for Short Messaging Service. An SMS text message is a very brusque note (nether 160 characters—a sentence or two) that you shoot from ane cellphone to some other. What'south so cracking near information technology?

• Similar a call, it'south immediate. You lot get the bulletin off your chest right now.

• As with email, the recipient doesn't have to answer immediately. The message waits for him even when his telephone is turned off.

• Unlike a telephone call, it's nondisruptive. Y'all can send someone a text message without worrying that he'southward in a motion picture, a meeting, or anywhere else where talking and holding a telephone upwards to the head would exist frowned upon. (And the other person can answer nondisruptively, too, by sending a text message back .)

• You lot have a written record of the substitution. There's no mistaking what the person meant. (Well, at to the lowest degree non because of audio quality. Whether or not you can understand the texting shorthand culture that'due south evolved from people using no-keyboard cellphones to type English language words—"C U 2morrO," and so on—is another matter entirely.)

The original iPhone service plan came with 200 free text messages a month; the base iPhone 3G and 3GS plans don't come up with any. Y'all can pay $5 a month for those 200 messages, or pay more than for more. Call up that you utilize up one of those 200 each time you lot send or receive a message.

The same rules and pricing apply to picture and video messages (known as MMS, or multimedia messaging service), which AT&T finally launched for the iPhone in the late summer of 2009.

Receiving a Text Bulletin

When you get an SMS, the iPhone plays a quick marimba riff and displays the name or number of the sender and the message, in a translucent message rectangle. If you're using the iPhone at the fourth dimension, you tin can tap Ignore (to go on doing what you were doing) or View (to open up the bulletin).

Otherwise, if the iPhone was asleep, information technology wakes up and displays the message correct on its Unlock screen. You have to unlock the phone and then open the Messages program manually. Tap the very first icon in the upper-left corner of the Habitation screen.

Tip

The Text icon on the Abode screen bears a little circled number "badge," letting you know how many new text messages are waiting for you.

Either style, the wait of Messages (which was called Text before the iPhone 3.0 software) might surprise you. It resembles iChat, Apple's conversation program for Mac, in which incoming text messages and your replies are displayed as though they're cartoon speech balloons.

Tip

The last 50 exchanges appear here. If you want to see even older ones, scroll to the very top and tap Load Earlier Messages.

To respond to the bulletin, tap in the text box at the bottom of the screen. The iPhone keyboard appears. Blazon away, and and so tap Send. Assuming your phone has cellular coverage, the bulletin gets sent off immediately.

And if your buddy replies, and so the balloon-chat continues, scrolling up the screen. Don't forget to turn the iPhone xc degrees for a bigger, wider keyboard!

Tip

If all this fussy typing is driving you nuts, you tin can always simply tap the big fat Phone call push to conclude the transaction by phonation.

The Text Listing

What's cool is that the iPhone retains all these exchanges. You can review them or resume them at any time by tapping Messages on the Dwelling house screen. A list of text bulletin conversations appears; a bluish dot indicates conversations that contain new messages.

Tip

If you've sent a message to a certain group of people, you tin can pre-accost a new note to the same grouping by borer the old message's row hither.

The truth is, these listings represent people , non conversations. For example, if you had a text bulletin exchange with Chris last week, a quick way to transport a new text bulletin (on a totally unlike subject) to Chris is to open that "chat" and only send a "reply." The iPhone saves yous the administrative work of creating a new bulletin, choosing a recipient, and and then on.

If having these one-time exchanges hanging around presents a security (or marital) risk, y'all can delete one in either of two means:

• From the Text Messages listing : Swipe abroad the conversation. Merely swipe your finger horizontally beyond the conversation'southward proper noun (either direction). That makes the Delete confirmation button appear immediately.

• From within a conversation's speech communication-balloons screen : Tap Edit to open the bulletin-deletion screen. Hither you can delete all the exchanges simultaneously (tap Clear All) or vaporize only particularly incriminating messages. To do that, tap the round buttons for the individual balloons you desire to nuke; then tap Delete (2) (or whatsoever number the push says). Tap Done.

Note

Interestingly, you lot can also forrard some messages you've selected in this way. When you tap the Forward push, a new approachable text message appears, ready for you to specify the new recipient.

Sending a New Bulletin

If you want to text somebody you've texted before, the quickest way, every bit noted to a higher place, is merely to resume 1 of the "conversations" already listed in the Text Messages list.

But options to fire off a text message are lurking all over the iPhone. A few examples:

• In the Messages program . From the Home screen, tap Messages. The iPhone opens the consummate listing of messages you've received. Tap the button at the summit-right corner of the screen to open a new text message window, with the keyboard ready to go.

  Address it past typing a few letters of the recipient's name and and so choosing from the listing of matches. Or tap the button, which opens your Contacts list. Tap the person yous want to text.

  Note

  Your unabridged Contacts list appears here, even ones with no cellphone numbers. But you can't text somebody who doesn't take a cellphone number.

• In the Contacts, Recents, or Favorites lists . Tap a person's proper name in Contacts, or next to a listing in Recents or Favorites, to open the Info screen; tap Text Message. In other words, sending a text message to anyone whose cellphone number lives in your iPhone is only two taps away.

  

• From Photos or Vox Memos . Whenever y'all run into a (Share) button—when you're looking at a photo or a video in Photos, for example, or when you tap the button in Voice Memos—the usual listing of sending options appears. It normally includes Email, MobileMe—and MMS. Borer MMS sends you back to Letters, where the photo, video, or sound file is fix to ship. (More on multimedia messages shortly.)

You lot can now tap that button once again to add some other recipient for this aforementioned message (or tap the button to type in a phone number). Lather, rinse, repeat as necessary; they'll all become the same bulletin.

In any example, the skinny picayune text message composition screen is waiting for you now. You're gear up to type and ship!

Tip

Links that people send you in text messages actually work. For example, if someone sends you a Web address, tap it with your finger to open up it in Safari. If someone sends a street accost, tap it to open up information technology in Google Maps. And if someone sends a phone number, tap it to punch.

Motion picture, Audio, or Video Letters

Human being, we waited long enough for this. It was absolutely bizarre that, for all its other superpowers, the iPhone could not send photos to other cellphones, allow alone audio clips or video clips. This feature—called MMS (multimedia messaging service) was on every cellphone on earth, even the $20 starter phones. But not on the iPhone.

The iPhone three.0 software finally brought this power to the iPhone 3G and 3GS. (Sadly, the original iPhone shall remain MMS-less.) It took AT&T a few months to catch up and turn on the characteristic ("by the end of the summer 2009," they kept saying), just it was worth the wait.

To send a photo or (on the iPhone 3GS) a video, tap the icon adjacent to the box where you type your text letters (shown on the facing page at correct). Two buttons appear: Take Photo or Choose Existing. (On the iPhone 3GS, the start push button says Take Photo or Video instead.)

If y'all want to transmit a photograph or video that's already on your phone, then tap Choose Existing; your Photos app opens automatically, showing all your photos and videos. Tap the one y'all desire and so tap Choose. If y'all choose Accept Photo or Video instead, and then your Camera app opens then you can take a new picture or (on the iPhone 3GS) snag a video clip.

In any example, yous now return to your SMS conversation in progress—simply now that photo or video appears inside the Send box. Type a caption or comment, if you like. And so tap Send to fire it off to your buddy.

Capturing Text-Message Goodies

In general, text letters are fleeting; most people take no idea how they might capture them and save them forever. Copy and Paste helps with that. (So does the amazing Google Vocalism service, merely that's another conversation.)

Some of the stuff in those text messages is easy to capture, though. For example, if you lot're on the receiving stop of an MMS photo or video, tap the pocket-size preview in the speech bubble. It opens at total-screen size so y'all tin can take a meliorate look at information technology—and if it'south a video, there's even a ► button and then you can play information technology. Either mode, if the moving picture or video is good enough to preserve, tap the button. You're offered a Salve Paradigm button; tap information technology to add together it to your iPhone's collection. (If you lot have a 3GS, you can also save a video—just tap Save Video, of course.)

If someone sends you contact data (name and address, for case), you can add it to your Address Book. Simply tap inside that bubble, then tap either Create New Contact or Add to Existing Contact.

Free Text Messaging

Text messaging is crawly. Paying for text messaging, not so much.

Fortunately, there are all kinds of sneaky ways to practice text messaging for free. Yes, you lot read that right: free. Hither are a couple of examples:

Solution #1: FreeMMS. Information technology's an app, of grade. A $1 programme from the App Store (Chapter 12) that really, truly works. It lets you send unlimited text letters—no, even better, picture show messages—for gratuitous.

There are only 2 minor gotchas. Kickoff, you lot take to specify the callee'south cellphone company (Verizon, AT&T, or whatever), which y'all don't always know. Second, replies come to your iPhone as email messages, so you're deprived of that prissy chat-room/balloon conversational result. But come on, man—you're saving 20 cents per bulletin forever!

Solution #two: Use the AIM chat program described in the next department. Create a buddy whose address is, for instance, +12125561212 (your friend'due south cellphone number). Any message you send to that address arrives as a text message—free to you. (This technique has a primal advantage: Your buddy can actually answer .)

Conversation Programs

The iPhone doesn't come with any chat programs, like AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), Yahoo Messenger, or MSN Messenger. But installing one yourself—similar AIM, beneath—is simple, as described in Chapter 12.

In that location are also apps like Beejive that let you chat away with your buddies no matter what chat network they're on.

Telephone call Waiting

Call Waiting has been around for years. With a phone call waiting feature, when yous're on ane telephone call, yous hear a beep indicating that someone else is calling in. Y'all can tap the Flash fundamental on your phone—if you know which 1 it is—to reply the 2d call while you put the first one on hold.

Some people don't utilize call waiting because it's rude to both callers. Others don't use information technology because they have no idea what the Flash key is.

On the iPhone, when a second telephone call comes in, the phone rings (and/or vibrates) every bit usual, and the screen displays the name or number of the caller, merely equally it always does. Buttons on the screen offer you iii choices:

• Ignore . The incoming call goes straight to voicemail. Your first caller has no idea that anything'southward happened.

• Agree Phone call + Answer . This button gives yous the traditional phone call waiting effect. You say, "Tin can you hold on a sec? I've got some other call," to the first caller. The iPhone puts her on hold, and you connect to the second caller. At this point, y'all tin bound back and forth between the two calls, or you can merge them into a briefing call, just as described on Concord.

• End Telephone call + Answer . Tapping this push hangs up on the first telephone call and takes the 2nd one.

If Telephone call Waiting seems a bit disruptive all the manner effectually, yous can turn it off; see Telephone call Waiting. When Call Waiting is turned off, incoming calls go straight to voicemail when you lot're on the phone.

Phone call Forwarding

Hither's a pretty cool characteristic y'all may not accept even known you had. Information technology lets you lot route all calls made to your iPhone number to a different number. How is this useful? Allow us count the means:

• When you're home. Y'all can have your cellphone'southward calls ring your home number so you can use whatever extension in the house, and so you don't miss any calls while the iPhone is turned off or charging.

• When you send your iPhone to Apple for battery replacement (Out-of-Warranty Repairs), you can forward the calls yous would have missed to your dwelling or work phone number.

• When you lot're overseas, y'all can frontward the number to i of the Web-based services that answers your voicemail and sends information technology to yous as an e-mail attachment (like GrandCentral.com or CallWave.com).

  

• When you're going to be in a identify with little or no AT&T cell coverage (Alaska, say), you lot can take your calls forwarded to your hotel or a friend's cellphone. (Forwarded calls eat up your allotment of minutes, though.)

Yous take to turn on Call Forwarding while you're withal in an surface area with AT&T coverage. First at the Habitation screen. Tap Settings→Phone→Call Forwarding, turn Call Forwarding on, and then tap in the new phone number. That's all there is to it—your iPhone volition no longer ring.

At to the lowest degree non until y'all turn the same switch off again.

Caller ID

Caller ID is another classic cellphone feature. Information technology'due south the one that displays the phone number of the incoming telephone call (and sometimes the name of the caller).

The merely thing worth noting nigh the iPhone's own implementation of Caller ID is that you lot tin can prevent your number from appearing when you call other people'due south phones. From the Dwelling house screen, tap Settings→Phone→Show MyCaller ID, so tap the On/Off switch.

Bluetooth Earpieces and Automobile Kits

The iPhone has more antennas than an emmet colony: seven for the cellular networks, one for Wi-Fi hot spots, one for GPS, and one for Bluetooth.

Bluetooth is a short-range wireless cable elimination engineering science. It's designed to untether y'all from equipment that would ordinarily require a string. Bluetooth crops up in computers (print from a laptop to a Bluetooth printer), in game consoles (like Sony'south wireless PlayStation controller), and to a higher place all, in cellphones.

There are all kinds of things Bluetooth can do in cellphones, like transmitting cameraphone photos to computers, wirelessly syncing your address volume from a computer, or letting the phone in your pocket serve equally a wireless Net antenna for your laptop. Merely the iPhone tin can practise only 1 Bluetooth thing: easily-free calling.

To be precise, it works with those tiny wireless Bluetooth earpieces, of the sort you see clipped to people's ears, as well every bit with cars with Bluetooth telephone systems. If your automobile has one of these "car kits" (Acura, Prius, and many other models include them), you lot hear the other person's vox through your stereo speakers, and there's a microphone congenital into your steering bicycle or rearview mirror. You lot keep your easily on the wheel the whole time.

Note

This discussion covers monaural Bluetooth earpieces intended for phone calls. Just the iPhone tin can likewise handle Bluetooth stereo headphones, intended for music. Details are on Bluetooth Stereo Headphones.

Pairing with a Bluetooth Earpiece

So far, Bluetooth easily-free systems have been embraced primarily only by the world'south geeks for one simple reason: Information technology's way too complicated to pair the earpiece (or car) with the telephone.

So what'south pairing? That's the system of "marrying" a phone to a Bluetooth earpiece, so that each works only with the other. If you lot didn't do this pairing, then some other guy passing on the sidewalk might hear your conversation through his earpiece. And you probably wouldn't like that.

The pairing process is dissimilar for every cellphone and every Bluetooth earpiece. Usually it involves a sequence like this:

1. On the earpiece, plow on Bluetooth. Make the earpiece discoverable . Discoverable just ways that your phone tin can "see" it. You'll have to consult the earpiece'due south instructions to learn how to do then.

2. On the iPhone, tap Dwelling house→Settings→General→Bluetooth. Turn Bluetooth to On . The iPhone immediately begins searching for nearby Bluetooth equipment. If all goes well, you lot'll encounter the proper name of your earpiece evidence up on the screen.

3. Tap the earpiece's name. Blazon in the passcode . The passcode is a number, unremarkably 4 or 6 digits, that must be typed into the telephone within most a minute. You have to enter this only once, during the initial pairing process. The thought is to preclude some evildoer sitting nearby in the airport waiting lounge, for example, to secretly pair his earpiece with your iPhone.

   The user'due south manual for your earpiece should tell you what the passcode is.

When you're using a Bluetooth earpiece, you dial using the iPhone itself (unless you're using voice dialing, of form). You by and large use the iPhone'southward own book controls, too. You generally printing a button on the earpiece itself to answer an incoming call, to swap call waiting calls, and to stop a telephone call.

If you're having any problems making a particular earpiece work, Google information technology. Type "iPhone Motorola H800 earpiece," for example. Chances are practiced that you'll find a writeup by somebody who's worked through the setup and made it work.

Car Kits

The iPhone works beautifully with Bluetooth car kits, as well. The pairing process generally goes exactly as described above: You make the car discoverable, enter the passcode on the iPhone, and then make the connection.

Once you're paired upwards, you can answer an incoming call by pressing a button on your steering wheel, for case. You make calls either from the iPhone or, in some cars, by dialing the number on the machine'southward own touchscreen.

Note

When Bluetooth is turned on but the earpiece isn't, or when the earpiece isn't nearby, the icon appears in gray. Oh—and when it's connected and working right, the earpiece'southward battery guess appears on the iPhone's status bar.

Of course, studies show that it'south the act of driving while conversing that causes accidents—not actually holding a phone. Then the easily-costless arrangement is less for rubber than for convenience and compliance with land laws.

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Source: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/iphone-the-missing/9780596806491/ch04.html

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