[Shodan775]

These maybe not the obvious things for those ,who bought an iPhone, I wasn't born knowing these, but I did pick up a bunch of ideas and life-saving tips from all over the place.

1. Getting Push email (immediate delivery) instead of having the phone fetch it (periodic auto-check) or manual (you click on the mail button to check it)

here is one guide:
Lifehacker, tips and downloads for getting things done

another
How to have Push Email on your iPhone with GMail - O'Reilly Answers

for hotmail/live :
Hotmail now supports push email, calendar, and contacts with Exchange ActiveSync

yahoo:
Getting Yahoo! Push email to work on the iPhone | iPhone Atlas - CNET Reviews

And other POP based email accounts:
iOS: Exchange ActiveSync Account Quick Setup Guide


How to shut your phone down completely (equals a battery pull)

Hold down the power (on top) button , when the slider comes up saying "slide to power off" DON'T release the button yet. Keep holding until the screen turns totally dark and the phone shuts off.

Turning it on is just holding the power button until the Apple logo comes up.

Obviously, just turning it off with the slider menu only puts it in a "sleep" mode, a low power state, similar for a typical phone shut down without a battery pull.


What to do with a locked-up iPhone?
It's hard to get to that state, but let's say you dropped it or you wanted to jailbreak it and something didn't quite worked out, and your phone refuses to restart, or keeps restarting and never loading up properly, here is what to do:

What you need:
1. A computer with a USB port and iTunes installed, iTunes running on the screen.
2. Your bricked phone.

First step. Have your phone completely off described above (holding the power button until it's completely off)

Second step. Now, you gonna need the iPhone USB wire close by, so you can reach it and plug it in with one hand (see next step why). Don't plug your phone in yet!

Third Step. Push down the Power button on the Phone and ALSO the Home button.

Fourth Step. When the apple logo comes up, release the power button but KEEP the Home button pushed in, don't let it go!

Now reach out with your other hand and plug in your phone into the USB outlet on your PC.

Fifth step. Your phone screen is gonna display the wire adapter icon and the iTunes icon, meaning , that's in the recovery mode. Your iTunes will find your phone and tell you, that it needs to be recovered. Let it do it.

If you don't want to wait for iTunes to download the firmware to your phone, you should have saved a copy before already on your computer and SHIFT click on the "restore" button in iTunes would let you choose the folder and file for the recovery, instead of waiting for the 600 plus MB firmware file to download, saving you a bunch of time.
Here some links for the 4.2.1 firmware (probably be updated with the 4.3 as soon as it is released)
Download iOS 4.0 Firmware (iPhone and iPod Touch) | download iOS 4 | iPhoneHeat

iPod, iPhone and iPad Firmware Download

iPod, iPhone and iPad Firmware Download


Sixth Step. Once that's installed, your iTunes will also ask you if you want to restore the phone from backup. If you back up your phone on the regular basis, this shouldn't be an issue. If you didn't. then good luck re-downloading and re-setting everything back on.


Copying Facebook Birthdays into your Calendar:

I'll make it super easy:

Go here with your Safari browser with your phone:
fdCal on Facebook

It will ask you to log in and so on, to "allow this application to access your info" Let it, do that.
At the next screen you gonna see a bunch of calendar options, which calendar you want to copy the birthday events.
Click on the "iCal" icon and it should ask you if you want to add those to your calendar.

Now you got them .

Here is the blog for it:
Getting Facebook Birthdays onto your iPhone | William Hook


Some other ideas and tips.

These are probably more widely known:

1. Turn off apps running in the background:

Double click the home screen until the running apps show up in a row on the bottom.
Hold your finger on one of them until it's start wiggling around and click on the minus icon on the corner to terminate the app running. This is a good way to reduce programs aren't needed to be running or restarting them.

I usually kill most of them and only leave chatting programs, social sites most of the time. It does save battery life too (assuming).


2. Display the music control on the lock screen:

Double tap the home button on the lock screen. You should have the volume bar and the arrows for navigation between the songs on your phone.

3. Reveal the ipod control without going into the ipod app:

On the home screen, double tap the home button and while the running apps show up, scroll to the LEFT. You should see the music control buttons and also the orientation lock button.



Delete emails without opening them:

Go to the email menu list. Swipe your finger from left to right on it and the delete button should come up.

Download music, youtube videos or other stuff from the web:
Get the downloader app from the app store.

[Garz]

Good right up for newbies.

[mededitor]

Great post, Shodan, thanks.

I also found that you can delete multiple emails by clicking the "edit" button on the Inbox screen (top right corner).