Smart Phone Tips Archives - Page 58 of 65

How to immediately contact all of your family and friends at once in an emergency

Posted on April 3, 2014

When disaster strikes, one of the first things we all try to do is contact our family and friends to let them know we’re ok – and make sure they are too.

What typically happens in situations like this is the cell towers get clogged up with all those frantic voice calls and text messages, making it difficult for many folks to get through to their loved ones. Not a good thing!

Well, now there’s an easier way to reach out to others in an emergency. A wonderful free service from Microsoft called HelpBridge makes it easy to contact all of your family members and friends immediately – and all at the same time – when you’re caught up in a disaster. Here’s how it works: [Read more…]

Apple releases iOS 7.1 for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch

Posted on March 11, 2014

ios-7-1 If you own an Apple mobile device, there’s a good chance that you can now update it to iOS 7.1. And even though the version number of the operating system only went from 7 to 7.1, this is no minor upgrade!

In addition to squashing a host of irritating and dangerous bugs, iOS 7.1 also enhanced several existing features while adding one big new one that’s sure to draw a lot of attention: native support for CarPlay. [Read more…]

Q&A: Why can’t I update my iPhone 4 to iOS 7?

Posted on March 3, 2014

Question from Craig H.: I’ve finally decided to update my iPhone 4 to iOS 7 but it won’t let me. The phone freezes up at the “Checking for updates” screen, and it remains frozen no matter how long I let it try.

Should I try updating it some other way? Am I doing something wrong? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Rick’s answer: Craig, I’m guessing that your iPhone has been jailbroken. If that’s the case, you won’t be able to install the update for iOS 7 until you un-jailbreak it.

Luckily, that’s real easy to do by simply restoring your phone to the factory default settings. Here’s how: [Read more…]

How to close all open tabs at once in Safari on iOS 7

Posted on February 28, 2014

iOS 7 is a great operating system for your Apple device because it has simplified many common tasks and added several very useful new features.

But one task in iOS 7 isn’t simpler at all. If you happen to have several tabs open in Safari at once, it can be a real pain closing all of them one at a time. As you probably know, it requires a LOT of swiping!

But luckily there is a way to easily and quickly close ALL open tabs at the same time. Just use the simple procedure explained below: [Read more…]

Free Bolt phone dialer app lets you automatically call other Bolt users via VOIP while using your plan minutes for everyone else

Posted on February 13, 2014

Many of us use one or more VOIP (Voice over IP) apps in order to save our mobile phone minutes, but it’s a hassle having to load the app every time we want to make a call.

Bolt is a free app that replaces your Android phone’s default dialer app. What sets Bolt apart from other VOIP apps is how it automatically places calls to other Bolt users via VOIP while still placing calls to everyone else over your carrier’s regular network (using your plan minutes of course). [Read more…]