iPhone 4 tips, tricks and troubleshooting:-
How to be organized and stay one step ahead of the telco companies and save hundreds if not thousands of dollars....
I recently got a new apple iPhone4. Not one to normally get the latest of anything just because it’s bigger brighter or shinier- it’s been funny to see other peoples reaction to having something recently released. It was time to get with the time and I was out of contract and the new iPhone is actually cheaper that having my old one that was well over 5 years old.
So it’s been a bit of a novelty – for the kids more than anyone but I must tell you of some tips and tricks to avoid you falling into the trap of having a mobile phone bill hundreds if not thousands over your normal mobile phone bill. I have had friends who had bills of over $2,000. Not a nice surprise to get in the mail!!!
It appears that most people who purchase an iPhone are not told to set certain settings on their phone to off to prevent the internet being constantly updating information, particularly for the applications on the iPhone-most of which you may not even use.
Ok so onto the troubleshooting tips to prevent being overcharged by you telephone company
iPhone settings:- Go into settings, then click on Mail, Contacts, calendars.
Hidden in this obscure little place is a setting titled “ Fetch new data’
When I got my iPhone it was set to ‘on’ and I was told nothing about this 'fetch new data function' and more disappointingly wasn’t told to make sure I turned it off.
The other important function to check is under the general settings tab. If having access to the internet is not needed then dis-enabling the ‘enable 3G function', as well as turning to the offsetting the cellular tab option and the data roaming function. It says to turn this off when abroad to avoid ‘substantial roaming charges nothing about the costs being exorbitant within your own country!
You can easily switch any or all of these back on your iPhone if you happen to need access to the internet but otherwise leave them all off!!
When you are home, and if you have your home internet set up on your phone the iPhone is supposed to tap into your home internet plan, using your data allowance from there, not the usually much smaller but quicker to chew up. It seems my iPhone didn’t use out home internet package but rather the data on the iphone package – and to be honest I don’t even know how. I didn’t use it for email and rarely used to internet but low and behold in comes a bill for well over $100 most than usual for the month with dates and times for countless internet sessions I didn’t not know I had. It’s all very confusing but Telstra seem to be doing the right thing by refunding money if you call to complain/tell them it was not made clear that you would be using up heaps of data if you kept certain functions on etc.
ONE LAST iPHONE TIP
While I’m on the subject there one other tip I have picked up along the way that may come in handy to you. If you iphone stops working and freezes then to unfreeze the iphone, try holding down the on/off switch button at the top of the phone as well as the circle at the bottom on the face of the phone at the same time for 5 seconds or so and it will hopefully unfreeze it. Be careful not to hold the circular button on its own or it activates the voice control function and may well randomly call people. This happened to me before I knew much about the iphone functions and all of a sudden my phone rang some random person in my contacts and due the phone being otherwise frozen I could not cancel to call, let along turn the phone off. It did this twice much to my embarrassment having to tell people I was sorry but my iPhone was randomly calling people !!! The disappointing thing is that I had been on the phone to Telstra about the frozen screen and not one person I spoke to and there were a few! Suggested this easy tip to unfreeze the phone so I almost sent it back to Telstra unnecessarily and would have been frustratingly phoneless for a week or more!!!!
What is your experience of this?? Have you experienced overcharging by your telco, had trouble with a new iphone/ mobile?
Claire McFee Author and Creator
Organize Your Life Organizers
NB: You can browse / view our Organize Your Life e - Organizer on your iPhone with the help of DropBox and Googlereader. Email me to find out more. Never be without your shopping list again! info @ organizeyourlife . com .au
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