What, it can do that? Yes, oddly enough, the IPhone can indeed make phone calls. I realized that in my plethora of entries on the IPhone, I neglected to talk about its most basic functions, making and receiving phone calls. So, here I am to rectify this oversight.
My phone is ringing, what do I do? Well, answering it would be my first suggestion. If you have a Bluetooth headset, or are listening to music with the Apple Headset, it's as easy as pressing a button on the aforementioned listening devices and start talking.
Barring that, if you're using VoiceOver, you'll need to do a 2 fingered double tap anywhere on the screen to answer the incoming call. Don't want to answer the call? Fine, just press the lock or either volume buttons and the call gets sent directly to voicemail.
Ending a call:
Now that you've answered the call and found out it's time to hang up, what do you do? Well, you could pull the phone away from your face and then find the "end Call" button by sweeping your finger around the screen and then tapping the above-mentioned button. You need to pull the phone away from your face as there's a proximity sensor which turns the screen off to prevent your cheek, (or nose), from activating buttons on the screen.
Alternatively, you could also do the same double fingered double tap on the screen and that would end the transmission. Finally, my favourite method, (the one I discovered when publically laundering my IPhone calling frustrations on the VIPhone email list today), is to push the Sleep/lock button twice in rapid succession. I do stress rapid, especially when using VoiceOver. It seems if you do it too slow, it simply locks the screen and goes into speaker mode. Very annoying.
It's still a convenient way of hanging up on callers, ehr, I mean ending calls when you get the hang of it.
Making calls:
To make a call, you have many options at hand.
From the home screen, double tap on the Phone Icon.
You should be greeted with VoiceOver saying, "blank phone number". If not, make sure the Keypad option is turned on. The keypad icon is found at the bottom of the screen to the left of the Voicemail icon.
Double tap on it and you'll be presented with the familiar dialing keypad.
Dial the number you wish to call and double-tap the "dial" button, found under the zero.
Another ingenious way of dialing is by using the voice recognition portion of your phone. Hold down the "home" button until you hear 2 short beeps. You can then give your voice command. To dial a number say "Dial x" where x is the number which you wish to reach. For example, you could say "dial 4164862500" and it would call our main office. You can also call contacts by name. For example, you could say, "call Martin mobile". This would try calling me via my mobile phone. My contact information would need to be in your contact list for this to work however.
For help on the voice commands, say the word "help" after the 2 short beeps.
Speaking of contacts, you can call people by going into your contact list and double tapping on their name and then their number.
Finally, from within the Phone App, you can open the Recents list and call any number listed there. You can also find a number within the favourites list and have your IPhone call it. No entries found in the favourites list? No problem. Simply double-tap on the "Add" button and choose the contacts which you wish to add. You need to repeat this action for each contact to be added.
Well, there you have it. Rudimentary IPhone usage in a nutshell. Hopefully, I have eased some discomfort in regards to basic calling features on the IPhone. I have to admit that it's actually helped me, because I was getting pretty frustrated with the darn thing. All I wanted to do was to call people successfully and end calls. There have been a few of my friends who were able to enjoy some of my IPhone pocket calls.
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Happy calling!