iPhone Tips And Tricks

5 Steps to Fix an iPhone App That Won’t Stop Crashing

Getting The Most Out of Your New iPhone or iPad

How to setup your new iPhone 4S

How to turn off diagnostics, disable carrier iQ on iPhone

How to Use Notifications Center in iOS 5 on your iPhone

How To Fix iPhone Battery Life Problems

How to fix a slow or buggy iPhone or iPad

iPhone Guides

How to Untether Your Previously Tethered Jailbreak Using Corona [5.0.1]

Untether Your Tethered iOS 5.0.1 Jailbreak With Corona

How to Put an iPhone Into DFU Mode



Guide To Using New Features in iOS 5



Quick Guide: Siri Tips and Tricks for Beginners



Quick Guide: Teach Siri Names and Relationships



How to Update Your iPhone 4 Without Upgrading the Baseband (Mac)



How to Update Your iPhone 4 Without Upgrading the Baseband (Windows)

Quick Guide: Siri Tips and Tricks for Beginners

If you’ve recently picked up a new iPhone 4S and haven’t start playing with Siri, there’s no time like the present to start. Though both novel and powerful, Siri isn’t always quite as good as you might expect if you’ve seen Apple’s ads. But with a little tender loving care, you can get Siri working for you more efficiently.

Correct Siri’s Mistakes

Every now and then, Siri will make a mistake. Depending on your accent or clarity of speech, this might be more often than you’d like. Thankfully there are two ways to keep Siri working with the right information.

The first is a hands-on approach. If Siri makes a mistake, take a look at your device. Scroll to the top of the screen and you should see your query transcribed, and any sections Siri doesn’t understand will be underlined in blue. Tap on your query to edit it.

But if you’re using voice commands already, you probably don’t want to switch to typing. Correcting Siri verbally might be a challenge if the software doesn’t understand your accent, but if you’ve just found yourself mumbling, speak clearly and repeat yourself. Or, if you’re trying to dictate a message or email, try using the following commands:

• “Change it to”: Siri will change your message to whatever you follow this with.
• “Add”: Siri will add whatever follows to your message.
• “Read it back to me”: Siri will read your message out loud, so you know if it’s now correct.

You can also correct message recipients on the fly, by saying “No, send it to (name) instead.”

Get Around Location Restrictions

With Siri still in beta, the software in available in many areas that aren’t quite ready for it. Unfortunately, that means all the location-based features are missing in those places. Rather than try to answer questions like “Where is the nearest Starbucks?” or “Is it raining?” with possibly incorrect information, the information is completely unavailable.

While you wait for Siri’s location services to be enabled in your area, you can get around some of these limitations. To get Siri to tell you the weather in your area, include your location in the query. “What is the weather in Vancouver, Canada?” will get you an answer even while asking Siri what the weather is while in Vancouver won’t. Use the nearest major city when you ask — smaller towns aren’t often recognized.

If you want Siri to find you directions home, you’re going to have to be able to look at your phone. Instead of asking Siri to find you the route home, ask Siri to search Google for your address, then click the Places tab in the results. This should show you the location you’re looking for, with a button for getting directions through Google Maps. You can do the same by searching for a business name or type.

Use Different Search Engines

If Google isn’t working out for you, you can make Siri search Yahoo! or Bing instead. Saying “Search Bing for X” or “Search Yahoo! for Y” works, or you can change your default search engine in Settings > Safari > Search Engine.

Find the Best Queries

Siri can understand a huge selection of queries, and seems to be learning more each day. Sometimes, though, the software gets hung up on a particular way of wording things and there’s nothing you can do but use the correct one.

TUAW has an exhaustive list of Siri-friendly queries, but if you’re just looking for a few foolproof ways to talk to your new digital assistant, here are the simplest ways to get the following jobs done:

• Add calendar events: start a command with “Schedule” to add what follows to your calendar. If you forget to include a date and time, Siri will ask.
• Set an alarm: “Set an alarm” or “Wake me up” both work well. Follow with a time, or let Siri ask you.
• Prepare an email: Make sure to say “Email” or “Send an email” here. Message is reserved for SMS/iMessage.
• Send a text message: “Message” or “Text” is the correct syntax here, as in “Text John ‘Want to meet for lunch?’” Try to resist the urge to include a “with” in the midst of it.
• Make a phone call: Start with “Call” or “Phone” and follow with the name of a contact.

Of course, those are just a few examples of some of the most important tasks Siri can handle for you. Experiment — not only are there lots of useful functions to be found, but Siri can roll with the punches for a surprising variety of joke requests.

Correct Names and Relationships

Siri can be awful at pronouncing some names, and her ability to understand relationships depends on whether you’re syncing your contacts through iCloud or Google. Learn more in our guide.

Learn More

If you’re on the go and you’re trying to remember what Siri can do, just bring the Siri prompt up by holding your home button and tap the “i” icon beside “What can I help you with.” This will bring up a list of suggestions. If all else fails, though, just ask. If Siri doesn’t understand, you’ll know, and you can always say “Cancel.”

Quick Guide: Teach Siri Names and Relationships

What’s in a name? Quite a lot, if you’re trying to communicate clearly with Siri, the iPhone 4S’s new digital personal assistant. Siri can do quite a lot, but to get the best possible experience she needs the right information. So for the sake of your sanity, let’s teach Siri how to pronounce your name. And for efficiency you can let her know how you relate to the people in your life.

With Siri’s limited language support — only English, French and German at the moment — and ever growing global presence, she’s not going to be able to get every name right straight out of the gate. There are a few ways you can help.

If you want Siri to know who you are, you’ll have to tell her. Open the Settings app, and navigate to General, then Siri. Make sure your name is listed under the My Info field. If it’s not, add it from your contacts list or make a new contact for yourself in the Contacts app and then assign it to that field.

If you’re lucky, that will be enough to get Siri to say your name correctly. If, like me, you have a hard to pronounce name, you might need to take a few different steps.

The simplest is just to ask. A query like “Siri, call me ‘Bob’” will work for most people. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to head back into your personal entry in Contacts, then follow these steps:

1. Tap Edit.
2. Scroll down and tap “add a new field.”
3. Select “phonetic first name.”

Siri will give precedence to this field if it’s filled in. It might take some trial and error, but sound your name out as you’d like it to be pronounced. You can test to see if Siri pronounces it correctly by using a query like “Tell me my name.” For me, entering “Neesa” as my phonetic first name worked perfectly.

If you simply can’t get Siri to pronounce your name correctly, your last best hope is to ask her to call you something else. “Call me X” works for a lot more than names. If you want your phone to call you “Master of the Universe” or “Dark Lord of Terror,” you just need to ask. If you don’t mind Siri getting a bit familiar, ask her to call you by a favorite nickname.

Now that Siri knows who you are, it’s time to introduce her to your family, friends and coworkers. There are two ways to handle this, depending on if you’re syncing your contacts through iTunes/iCloud or through Google Contacts.

If you’re using iTunes or iCloud, it’s easy. You can tell Siri exactly how the people in your life relate to you. Just say “So-and-so is my huband” or mother, brother, boss — you name it, she’ll remember it. Then you can ask her to call your mom and she’ll know exactly who you mean.

You can set these relationships up manually as well, by adding “related people” fields to your personal contacts entry.

If you’re syncing your contacts through Google, things get a bit more complicated. Siri will still let you assign relationships however you’d like, but Google Contacts only supports three relationships: spouse, manager and assistant. Nothing else will maintain or sync properly. To get around this, you can go through and add nicknames to all the relevant people in your contacts list. This will do the job, but can leave Siri confused about syntax at times.

There is a better way, assuming you have iCloud enabled. Just follow these steps:

1. Open Settings/iCloud
2. Slide Contacts to On.
3. Close settings and open Contacts.
4. Tap “Groups” in the upper-left corner of the screen.
5. Scroll down and select All iCloud.
6. Add a new contact.
7. Fill out your own information.
8. Add your Related People as above.
9. Return to settings and add this new contact under My Info in General/Siri.

Now Siri will keep track of your relationships using the iCloud synced contact instead of Google’s synced contacts.

And that’s it! With these tips, Siri should know your name and all the important people in your life. Now you can tell her to call your dad, message your boss and remind you to buy flowers for your wife, and she’ll know exactly what to do. Questions, ideas? Let us know in the comments.