Assistive Touch

You can make specialised commands when you tilt, move or make a custom finger motion on your phone.

The setting is available in Settings > General > Accessibility > AssistiveTouch (right down the bottom).

Once enabled, you will see an icon in the bottom right corner which offers options for 1-4 finger gestures or “device” commands (tilt or move your phone in a certain way), or even “create custom gesture”.

A custom gesture means drawing it on the screen, hit stop, then save. Saved gestures are stored in your gesture “Favourites”. Selecting one of your favourites will demonstrate the gesture onscreen.

Private browsing mode

You can now hide your browsing activity (and not display the last visited page), which may be useful when lending your phone to a friend. Before you give it to them, turn on this mode by going to Settings > Safari > Private Browsing tab. The option to clear browsing history is there too.

Snap pics with your headphones

iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S users now have a pseudo remote control, using the volume up button on any headphones with Apple music controls. It’s a sweet by-product of Apple’s decision to make your iPhone’s volume up button control the shutter. With a mini tripod, taking high quality photos and video has become much easier.

Custom vibrations and blinking alerts

Now there is far more discreet way of alerting yourself to a special contact. In “Contacts” > select someone > Edit > Vibrations > Create new vibration. Creating a new rhythm is achieved by tapping your screen.

If you want your camera flash to alert you to a caller, go to General Settings > Accessibility > LED flash for Alerts. When you have your phone in silent mode, the flash will blink to alert you of a new notification.

Choosing another map route

When getting directions on the pre-installed Maps you now have up to two other route options that will hover over the map. Tap on the alternate path to use it.