Table of contents for 196 in iPad & iPhone User

In August, Apple announced that it would be holding a ‘Special Event’ on 12 September. At the time of writing, it was expected the tech giant would unveil the next generation the iPhone and Apple Watch. Invites to view the event contain the tagline ‘Wonderlust’ and feature an Apple logo that appear to be composed of a sand-like substance, with parts of it being swept away in a breeze. The logo’s composition bred speculation as to what Apple had in store for the event. Although at the time of writing we don’t know specific details, Apple will almost certainly showcase the iPhone 15 line-up, which is expected to switch from Lightning to USB-C and deliver several iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max updates, including a new titanium frame and a…

Early in 2021, Apple announced a suite of features meant to protect children from being sexually exploited online. Some are on-device, like parental controls that prevent child accounts from seeing or sending sexual photos in Messages, but the most controversial measure was a system to scan photos as they were uploaded to iCloud. The system was meant to protect privacy by only comparing unique hashes of images to see if they matched the unique hashes of known CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material). Still, it was roundly criticized by privacy advocates as a system that could be exploited, for example, by state actors forcing Apple to find images of dissidents. Some child safety experts also thought the system wasn’t robust enough, as it could only match images from a known database…

It’s time for everyone’s favourite development in the world of Apple tech: a port change. Yep, that’s right. After what will have been about 11 years, the iPhone is once again changing its charging port, this time from Lightning to the increasingly ubiquitous USB-C. (For comparison sake, the previous 30‑pin dock connector, lasted just nine years, from the third-generation iPod to the iPhone 5.) We all know the benefits that the USB-C transition will bring: interoperability, less cable waste, and improvements in speed. But it’ll also cause some pain for those who have loads of Lightning cables lying around that will be, if not useless, then at least superfluous. However, even with the big change that is the iPhone’s charging port, Lightning won’t be excised from across Apple’s line-up. Along…

If you don’t have much time but need to get as much juice as possible into your fading iPhone, you need to know the fastest way to quickly charge an iPhone. Here we list the fastest ways to charge an iPhone from using a Lightning cable with USB-C charger to clamping a magnetic battery pack to the back of the phone. No matter how large and durable a battery is, sooner or later it has to be charged. This can take a long time, especially with large batteries. However, you can minimize the time required if you make the most of the iPhone’s fast-charging function. This means using a charger that takes full advantage of the maximum charging speed. How fast the iPhone charges depends on the model and the…

If you have an iPad already or are thinking of picking up an older one, maybe a refurbished model that would save you some money, it’s a good idea to find out how long it will still be able to use apps and services. Apple is usually excellent in this area, often keeping older generations of its products on the latest versions of iPadOS or at least blessed with security updates to keep them safe. But there comes a time when the software on an iPad can no longer be updated to a secure version of iPadOS, and when that happens you may find that apps and websites will no longer work and your data could be at risk. Here’s a guide to how long you can expect an iPad…

Price: £79 from fave.co/3CYCQD3 Pardon me while I stand and salute EarFun’s new flagship noise-cancelling earbuds, the Air Pro 3. These featurefilled mighty mites deliver dynamic, detailed, and full-bodied sound. While they’re just a bit shy in bass articulation, they deliver much of what you’ll get from buds with much higher price tags. Comfort level is good – I can wear them for hours – and the active noise cancellation (ANC) is improved compared to the company’s earlier efforts, wiping away a goodly amount of plane, train, and bus noise as well as walk-about wind noise. I’m happy to report that the Air Pro 3’s noise-cancelling has been upgraded. What really sets the Air Pro 3 apart from its mid-priced competition is a futuristic feature set that could grow in…

The past few years have seen highly elevated levels of unexpected deaths of those around us. Preparations people might once have made as they aged or contracted a disease that took some time to strike the fatal blow are gone in a moment. Survivors are left with loss and the material remains of that person’s life, including their hardware. The saddest thing I have to tell people who write in after someone close to them has passed away is that they can’t access the stored photos, letters, and other parts of a person’s life. In some cases, of course, people wish their life’s digital record to end with them. Most of the time, it’s an accident, due to a lack of planning or knowledge. Apple offers a way to gain…

For some people Live Photos cause confusion – not everyone understands that as well as still photos you can also capture moving ‘photos’ that preserve the moments before and after you take a photo, including the sound – all they want is a standard shot, but they don’t know how to turn the feature off. For others, Live Photos are a cool but inessential feature of the iOS photography experience. They’re great for bringing a particular photo ‘to life’, and they’re especially excellent for making your own GIFs from photos – but they also take up a lot of storage space. The files are usually twice as big as those for a regular photo. That can be a problem for your photo storage, considering that Apple keeps Live Photos on…

Now that we know the iPhone 15 will arrive at Apple’s ‘Wonderlust’ event, we can focus all our attention on what is releasing and when. And now we have a new report that suggests the iPhone 15 Pro Max might be constrained at launch. After reporting earlier this month that the iPhone 15 Pro Max was entering mass production and wouldn’t see a delay as rumoured, Ming-Chi Kuo now cautions (fave.co/3Z95CLm) that due to “production challenges” the iPhone 15 Pro Max has lagged behind the other models. He says the Pro Max was “the last to kick off”, which implies it might be a few more weeks before Apple catches up to demand. According to Kuo, the main reasons for the issues were with “stacked CIS, panels, batteries (expanding when…

A cross the ever-growing streaming landscape, the free trial seems to be going away. Once a staple of streaming services, you can’t easily ‘try before you buy’ with Netflix, Disney+ or many others. At least in the UK, the same is now true of Apple TV+. While the US site lists a ‘Free 7-day trial’ in its pricing information, the UK site now says ‘No commitments’, simply indicating that you can cancel your subscription at any time. Apple didn’t exactly announce the news, it simply changed its UK website (fave. co/3Es4ppb), scrubbing all mention of the free 7-day trial. The change doesn’t show in other regions yet, so we don’t know if the UK is just first, or will be an outlier. However, there are still other ways to try…

Apple updates iOS every year without fail, bestowing upon our iPhones a range of new features and security improvements as well as the occasional redesign. Indeed, when it’s released most iPhone users will move to iOS 17 pretty much straight away. But what if you want to go back to an older version of the operating system? Is that even possible? In this article we explore what options you have when wanting to downgrade iOS on your iPhone. CAN I DOWNGRADE FROM ONE VERSION OF iOS TO ANOTHER? We won’t waste your time. The answer is no. (At least, assuming we’re talking about full public versions of iOS, as opposed to betas. We’ll discuss those in a moment.) There used to be workarounds and fudges that could make it kind…

I like big phones and I cannot lie, and I really like the size of the iPhone 14 Pro Max. I don’t necessarily want it to be bigger but if I did, I’d have to turn to one of the folding Android phones, which are the only handsets bigger than the Pro Max’s 6.7-inch display. I’m not interested. Samsung, however, thinks I’m missing out, and if I just give it a try, I’ll be completely dumbfounded and dazed when I come to the revelation of the Galaxy Z Fold5 folding phone. To convince naysayers like me, Samsung has updated its Try Galaxy app (fave.co/3RhwJlT), so any iPhone user can ‘test drive the intuitive One UI 5.1.1 and explore features from the new Galaxy Z Flip5 and Z Fold5’. All you…

I magine this scene: a busy, bustling video production studio with editors scrambling to edit their masterpieces. You probably imagine them on hulkingly large workstations and giant monitors, right? Now picture this: they’re all sitting on comfortable couches – but just as busy – editing on iPads. Final Cut Pro for iPad (fave. co/3RecMMM) brings a new tool into the mix for both amateur and professional creators alike. While the above scenario may not seem realistic yet for those in the industry, there are various ways that the iPad can enhance and improve the production process. And Final Cut Pro is a huge step toward turning the iPad into an actual computer. Can the iPad Final Cut Pro really be a replacement for the Mac version? Or is it merely…

The worst thing for your safety and that of others while you’re driving is to interact with your phone, particularly attempting to engage with texting. However, sometimes you want to let people know that you’re unavailable while driving. Apple offers an autoreply to help. First, you need to make sure that the While Driving mode of Focus turns on automatically while you’re driving. Go to Settings > Focus > Driving Focus > While Driving to set options: Activate: The Automatically option should be set by default. However, you might prefer to use When Connected to Car Bluetooth if you’re never driving without connecting – that is, other times, you’re on transit or a passenger. You can also set Manually to enable from Control Centre – before driving, not while. Activate…

Apple unveiled a new emphasis on saving the lives of its customers in September 2022, with a Crash Detection feature joining the existing array of safety and emergency functions on the iPhone. Most users will regard it as a handy background feature: something that offers peace of mind while hopefully never being called into action. But you may feel differently if you start to experience false positives, as has been anecdotally reported by some rollercoaster riders as well as skiers – reports suggest that emergency services are being inundated with automated emergency calls from the slopes. If your iPhone mistakenly believes it has detected a crash and you somehow don’t notice, you could end up in the embarrassing situation of having to explain to emergency responders why they’ve been called…

You look at your inbox on your iPhone and iPad and find it empty. You know you had messages. They’re not in your Trash or Junk folders. Where did they go? Focus on the lower-left corner of the Mail app’s view, and you’ll see a blue circle with three lines, from largest to smallest, top to bottom. That’s the Filter button, and you tapped it without realizing it. Tap it again, the blue inverts to white, and your email is back. Apple added the filter feature years ago, but I keep hearing from readers and family members who encounter it unwittingly. If you don’t set out to use it, you don’t know it’s there; if you tap it accidentally, you don’t have a reference point to know that’s what happened.…

Apple is undergoing some staffing changes that include the elimination of social media support staff. As a result, Apple will soon no longer provide customer support through X/Twitter, YouTube and its Apple Support Community, according to MacRumors (fave.co/3P4dEkh). It cites anonymous sources that state that on 1 October, @AppleSupport on X/Twitter (fave. co/3EunQxs) will provide automated replies that explain other ways to get support from Apple. Also, comment replies to the Apple Support YouTube channel (fave. co/3EuQCxW) will cease. Most concerning is that Apple will no longer have officials who post to the Apple Support Community forum (fave.co/3LefspM), which launched 12 years ago. It is a very active web resource for users to discuss issues with Apple products. MacRumors’ report does not state if the forum will remain available for…

There’s reason to believe that 2024 will be a make-or-break year for Apple, mainly because of Vision Pro, but also partly because of some blossoming plans in the smart-home sector and the Apple Watch’s 10th anniversary. (The anniversary of its original announcement, before you write in.) These are unique circumstances, and in this specific case it’s reasonable to expect something memorable. I’ll tell you what I don’t buy, though: The idea that 2024 is going be a groundbreaking year for the iPhone. I mean, look, it might. It’s theoretically possible that Apple will choose 2024 to release a folding phone at long last, eliminate the Dynamic Island and go all-screen for the first time, or banish the newly arrived USB-C connector and all other ports and apertures. It’s all possible.…

Reports in August 2023 suggested that the batteries in the iPhone 14 generation had depleted faster than expected, with people reporting reduced battery health by up to 10 percent. People wouldn’t even know that their batteries had depleted if Apple didn’t give them this information – which is something it was forced to do a few years ago after the ‘Batterygate’ scandal where the company was found to be throttling iPhones whose batteries were degrading. Apple maintained this was to stop handsets suddenly shutting down. Since the arrival of iOS 11.3 in early 2018, it’s been possible to go to Settings > Battery and tap on Battery Health to see how healthy your battery is. In more recent years, Apple has made changes to iOS to preserve the battery for…

Apple has offered the ability to use an eSIM ever since the arrival of the iPhone XS. The iPhone 14 was the first model to offer only eSIM in the US, dispensing with those classic plastic cards that have been a part of the mobile experience since the beginning. While this is all well and good when in your own country, it means you can’t simply whip out your normal SIM and put in a locally bought pay-as-you-go one when travelling abroad. So, can you use an eSIM when on an international holiday? WHAT IS AN ESIM? As the name suggests, an eSIM is an internal electronic SIM card that acts in the same way as the old plastic SIMs. The eSIM is linked to your device and does all…

Price: £256 from fave.co/462IUXA Technics is one of the big old brands of audio. Half a century’s worth of hi-fis hasn’t left the brand with a whole lot of sex appeal, but instead there’s a reassuring sense that this lot probably know what they’re doing. And so it is with the new flagship EAH-AZ80 earbuds. It takes confidence to go toe-to-toe with Apple, Bose, and Sony at the £300 end of the true wireless earbud market, but Technics has earned it. With an understated design, excellent audio, and the near-unique ability to connect to three devices simultaneously, these are one of the best options around for those who care more about how their buds sound than what brand is on the box. DESIGN The AZ80 buds look simple enough. Available…

If you’ve experienced weird appointments or reminders appearing in your iPhone’s Calendar app, you may be afraid that you have got an iPhone Calendar virus, or that your calendar has been hacked. What’s more likely is that you have been subscribed to a third-party calendar, which is generating annoying spam appointments. This kind of calendar is becoming prolific, with more and more cases, so you are most certainly not alone in seeing these annoying appointments appear on your iPhone – in fact colleagues have also been affected by this irritating phenomenon. Thankfully, iPhone calendar spam is not dangerous and should be easy to get rid of. This isn’t an iPhone Calendar Virus, but it certainly feels like one when you get a load of appointments arrive on your iPhone. Here’s…

Text messages are among the most utilitarian communication formats. Senders get a small window to type a brief note or load images – and it’s designed to be viewed and answered promptly. Apple takes a lot of that monotony away with iMessages, its proprietary messaging service for talking to other people with Apple devices. There are a ton of cool features we all use every day – animoji, tapbacks, links, typing prompts – but I recently discovered a new one that had completely passed me by. Hidden behind the small arrow next to your message is feature called ‘Send with effect’ (1.), and it’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. While we’ve seen the automatic balloons that appear when you type ‘Happy birthday!’ to someone, you can accompany…

Being able to use a Wi-Fi network is pretty much an essential function of any smartphone these days, so if you’re having problems with your iPhone maintaining a Wi-Fi connection it can very quickly become frustrating – especially if you have limited data available on your contract and don’t want to switch to cellular (5G or 4G) in order to get a better signal. Here’s a few things to try if you want to find out why your iPhone is dropping its Wi-Fi signal and stop it from happening. Before moving onto more complex solutions, it’s best to make sure that simple things aren’t causing the problem. Here’s a few settings and process to check at the outset. 1. RUN SOFTWARE UPDATE It’s usually* a good idea to ensure that…