Chapter 4

Understanding the Phone-damentals

In This Chapter

Making a call

Visualizing visual voicemail

Recording a greeting

Calling hands-free

Receiving a call

Choosing ringtones

Setting up conference calls

Facing up to FaceTime

You may well have bought an iPhone for its spectacular photo viewer, its marvelous widescreen display, its multimedia capabilities, and the best darn pocket-sized Internet browser you’ve ever come across. Not to mention its overall coolness.

However, it’s easy to forget that, for many of us, the iPhone’s most critical mission is the one from which its name is derived: The iPhone is first and foremost a cellphone. And no matter how capable it is at all those other things, when push comes to shove, you had best be able to make and receive phone calls.

That requirement puts a lot of responsibility in the hands of AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon, the iPhone’s main (but not only) wireless carriers in the United States. As with any cellphone, the strength of the wireless signal depends a great deal on your location and the robustness of the carrier’s network.

As noted in Chapter 1, the cell signal status icon at the upper-left corner of the screen can clue you in on what your phone-calling experience may be like. Simply put, more dots supposedly equate to a better experience. What you hope to avoid are those two dreaded words: No Service. Cell coverage aside, this chapter is devoted to all the nifty ways you can handle wireless calls on an iPhone.

And when we say nifty, we mean nifty. If you and the person you're gabbing with have a good Wi-Fi or cellular connection, you can see each other. That’s right: We’re talking about video calling, through a remarkable feature called FaceTime. (FaceTime also lets you make a video call to a friend with an iPad 2 or later tablet, a fourth-generation or later iPod touch, or a Mac computer.)

The promise of video calling has been around since LBJ occupied the White House. But despite various efforts to bring video calling or video chat to computers and certain other mobile phones, video calling has only recently started to go Main Street.

With FaceTime, Apple is doing as much as any outfit this side of Microsoft-owned Skype to make video calling a more regular occurrence. Don’t take our word for it; give FaceTime a try. Sorry, but we’re going to leave you hanging until the end of the chapter to figure out how to do that. (Trust us — giving FaceTime a whirl isn’t hard.)

In the meantime, we present more conventional but no less important ways to make and receive calls on your iPhone. Somewhere, Alexander Graham Bell is beaming.

Making a Call

Start by tapping the Phone icon on the Home screen. You can then make calls by tapping any of the icons that show up at the bottom of the screen: Favorites, Recents, Contacts, Keypad, or Voicemail, in that order. In this section, we describe these options one by one.

The iPhone also lets you make calls by voice, using Siri or, in some cases, the aptly named Voice Control. We discuss these options in Chapter 7.

Contacts

If you read the chapter on syncing (Chapter 3), you know how to get the snail-mail addresses, email addresses, and (most relevant for this chapter) phone numbers that reside inside your PC or Mac contacts into the iPhone. Assuming that you went through that drill already, all those addresses and phone numbers are hanging out in one place. Their not-so-secret hiding place is revealed when you tap the Contacts icon in the Phone app. (Okay, so Contacts also hangs out in the Extras folder.)

If you enter your Facebook credentials in Settings, your Facebook friends — and their phone numbers, if they were made publicly available in Facebook — will automatically populate your list of contacts. You can also add your Twitter credentials to populate the list with Twitter user names and photos.

Here’s how to make those contacts work to your benefit:

1. In the Phone app, tap Contacts.
2. Flick your finger so the list of contacts on the screen scrolls rapidly up or down, loosely reminiscent of the spinning Lucky 7s on a Las Vegas slot machine. (Okay, very loosely.)

   Think of the payout on a One-Armed Bandit with that kind of power.

   Don't feel like flicking? You can find a contact by

   • Moving your fingers along the alphabet on the right edge of the Contacts list or tapping one of the letters to jump to names that begin with that letter, easier said than done with the tiny size of those letters on older phones but a bit simpler on the larger display iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
   • Starting to type in the search field near the top of the list. Try the name of the contact or the place where your contact works.
   • Using Spotlight (refer to Chapter 2).
3. When you’re at or near the appropriate contact name, stop the scrolling by tapping the screen.

   Note that when you tap to stop the scrolling, that tap doesn’t select an item in the list. This behavior may seem counterintuitive the first few times you try it, but we got used to it and now we really like it this way.

4. Tap the name of the person you want to call.

   As shown in Figure 4-1, you see a lot of fields with the individual’s phone numbers, physical and email addresses, and possibly even a mug shot. You may have to scroll down to see more contact info.

   If the person has more than one phone number, the hardest decision you must make is choosing which number to call.

5. Tap the phone number, and the iPhone initiates the call.

Your iPhone contacts reflect any groups you belong to, such as different departments in your company, friends from work, and friends from school. When you’re looking at the Contacts entry for an individual person, an All Contacts button appears in the upper-left corner. Tap All Contacts to display the roster of all your contacts, and the button at the upper-left corner changes to Groups. Tap that button to access contacts for a given group.

Among the Group listings you see is one for all your iCloud contacts and one for all your friends on Facebook. In some cases, your contacts will be linked — that is, information supplied by Facebook, Microsoft Exchange, or some other source will be combined into a single entry. An obvious benefit of this linking is that you can cut down on duplicate contact listings. If the iPhone doesn’t automatically link appropriate contact entries, you can do the job manually from the given contact. Tap Edit, scroll to the bottom, and tap the green circle with the white + inside to link contacts. Choose the appropriate entry to link with from among your entire list of contacts.

Your own iPhone phone number, lest you forget it, appears at the top of the Contacts list, provided you arrived in Contacts through the Phone app.

You can also initiate text messages and emails from within Contacts. Those topics are discussed in greater depth in Chapters 6 and 12, respectively.

Favorites

Favorites is where you can keep a list of the people and numbers you dial most often. Consider Favorites the iPhone equivalent of speed-dialing. Merely tap the person’s name in Favorites, and your iPhone calls the person.

You can set up as many favorites as you need for a person. So, for example, you may create separate favorite listings for your spouse’s office phone number, cell number, and FaceTime entry.

Setting up Favorites is a breeze. When looking at one of your contacts, you may have noticed the Add to Favorites option. When you tap this option, all the phone numbers you have for that person pop up. Tap the number you want to make into a favorite, and it turns up on the list.

If any of your chosen folks happen to fall out of favor, you can easily kick them off the Favorites roster. Here’s how:

1. Tap the Edit button in the upper-left corner of the screen.

   Note that a red circle with a horizontal white line appears to the left of each name in the list.

2. Tap the circle next to the A-lister getting the heave-ho.

   A red Delete button appears to the right of the name, as shown in Figure 4-2.

   

3. Tap Delete.

   The person (or one of his or her given phone numbers) is no longer afforded the privilege of being in your iPhone inner circle.

Booting someone off the Favorites list does not remove that person from the main Contacts list.

You can rearrange the order in which your favorites are displayed. Tap Edit, and then, to the right of the person you want to move, press your finger against the symbol that looks like three stacked short horizontal lines. Drag that symbol to the place on the list where you want your favorite contact to appear. Tap Done when the listings are as you like them.

You can designate new favorites by tapping the + symbol at the upper-right corner of the screen. Doing so brings you back to Contacts. From there, select the appropriate person and number.

You can add a contact’s FaceTime listing as a shortcut to a FaceTime audio or video call, which we get to later in the chapter.

Recents

Tapping the Recents icon displays the iPhone call log. The Recents feature houses logs of all the, well, recent calls made or received, as well as calls you missed. Tap All to show all the recent calls or tap Missed to show just those you missed. Under the All list, completed calls and missed calls that have been returned by tapping the red entry are shown in black, and missed calls that haven’t been returned in this fashion are in red, along with a descriptor of the phone you were calling or received a call from (home, mobile, or location). You also get an indicator of whether the call was a phone call or FaceTime call.

By tapping the i-in-a-circle next to an item in the list, you can find out the time calls were made or missed, as well as any known info about the caller from your Contacts information. Also shown is the length of the time you spoke to the person, assuming a conversation indeed took place.

To return a call, just tap anywhere on the name.

If one of the calls you missed came from someone who isn’t already in your Contacts list, you can add that person. Tap the right-pointing arrow, and then tap Create New Contact. If the person is among your contacts but has a new number, tap Add to Existing Contact and choose the contact from your list.

Tap Share Contact to share a contact with a friend, family member, or colleague. You have the option to send that person an email or a message (MMS, text, or iMessage message). The contact info is already embedded in the message that you send.

You can share with people also by using the wireless AirDrop feature, which was introduced with iOS 7 and works on the iPhone 5 and later models. For more on AirDrop, read Chapter 7.

You can clear an individual entry from the Recents list by swiping from right to left on a name and tapping the red Delete button that appears. Or tap Edit, tap the red circle next to an entry, and then tap the red Delete button.

Keypad

From time to time, of course, you have to dial the number of a person or company who hasn’t earned a spot in your Contacts. Or you need to access a keypad to navigate a voicemail system. In those situations, you’ll want to tap the Keypad icon to bring up the large keys of the virtual touchtone keypad you see in Figure 4-3. Just tap the appropriate keys and then tap Call to dial. If the number you're dialing appears in your Contacts list, you’ll see the name of the caller just below the digits that you've dialed.

If you dial an unfamiliar number, you can add it to your Contacts by tapping the + sign adjacent to the number you just dialed. After doing so, tap Create New Contact, Add to Existing Contact, or Cancel.

You can use the iPhone’s keypad also to remotely check your voicemail at work or home. Come to think of it, what a perfect segue into the next section. It’s on one of our favorite iPhone features, visual voicemail.

Visual voicemail

How often have you had to listen to four or five (or more) voicemail messages before getting to the message you really want, or need, to hear? As shown in Figure 4-4, the iPhone’s clever visual voicemail presents a list of your voicemail messages in the order in which calls were received. But you need not listen to those messages in order.

You can tell if you even have voicemail in a few ways:

• A red circular badge showing the number of pending messages awaiting your attention appears above the Phone icon on the Home screen or above the Voicemail icon in the Phone app. The tally, if it appears over the Phone icon on the Home screen, may include recent missed calls as well as voicemail messages.
• You may also see a message alert on the iPhone display that shows the name of the caller and the word voicemail. You can tap to listen, or close the alert and listen later. You’ll also be notified in Notification Center, where you can swipe to return the call.

  

  

Whatever draws you in, tap that Voicemail icon to display the list of voicemails. You see the caller’s phone number (assuming this info is known through Caller ID) and, in some cases, his or her name. Or you see the words Unknown or Private Caller.

The beauty of all this is that you can ignore (or at least put off listening to) certain messages. We are not in the advice-giving business on what calls you can safely avoid; disregard messages from the IRS or your parole officer at your own risk.

A blue dot next to a name or number signifies that you haven’t heard the message yet.

To play back a voicemail, tap the name or number in question. Then tap the tiny play/pause icon that shows up to the left. Tap to pause the message; tap again to resume. Tap Speaker if you want to hear the message through the iPhone’s speakerphone. Tap Call Back to immediately dial the person’s number, or tap Delete to remove the voicemail from the list.

Tap the i-in-a-circle next to a caller’s name or number to bring up any contact info on the person or to add the caller to your contacts.

iOS 8 has an additional shortcut for making a call. Double-tap the Home button to display the multitasking screen (as described in Chapter 2). You’ll see circular thumbnail pictures representing your phone favorites, as well as the people with whom you’ve recently been in touch. Tap the circle for the person you want to call, and then tap the telephone icon next to the number you want to dial (home, work, mobile, and so on), as shown in Figure 4-5. With this approach, you don’t have to visit the Phone app to make a call.

The scrubber bar (labeled in Figure 4-4) shows you the length of the message and the tiny playhead along the bar shows how much of the message you’ve heard. If you hate when callers ramble on forever, drag the playhead to rapidly advance through a message. Perhaps more importantly, if you miss something, you can replay that segment.

Returning a call is as simple as tapping Call Back. If the caller’s number is unknown, Call Back appears dimmed. And you can delete a voicemail by pressing Delete.

If you have no phone service, you’ll see a message that says Visual Voicemail is currently unavailable.

You can listen to your iPhone voicemail from another phone. Just dial your iPhone number and, while the greeting plays, enter your voicemail password. You can set up such a password from the Home screen by tapping Settings⇒Phone⇒Change Voicemail Password. You’ll be asked to enter your current voicemail password, if you have one. If one doesn’t exist yet, tap Done. If you have a password, enter it and then tap Done. You’ll then be asked to type the new password and tap Done twice.

Recording a greeting

You have two choices when it comes to the voicemail greeting your callers will hear. You can accept a generic greeting with your phone number by default. Or you can create a custom greeting in your own voice, as follows:

1. In Voicemail, tap Greeting.
2. Tap Custom.
3. Tap Record and dictate a clever, deserving-of-being-on-the-iPhone voicemail greeting.
4. When you’ve finished recording, tap Stop.
5. Review the greeting by pressing Play.
6. If the greeting is worthy, tap Save. If not, tap Cancel and start over at Step 1.

Voice dialing

You can make a call hands-free, just by opening your mouth. To read the details on voice control and Siri, the personal assistant who takes voice stuff to another level, see Chapter 5.

Receiving a Call

It’s wonderful to have numerous options for making a call. But what are your choices when somebody calls you? The answer depends on whether or not you're willing to take the call.

Accepting the call

To accept a call, you have four options:

• Tap Answer.
• If the phone is locked, slide the screen to the right.
• If you're donning stereo earbuds or EarPods, tap the microphone icon. Microphone adapters for standard headsets may also work.
• If you wear a wireless Bluetooth headset or use a car speakerphone, push the Answer button on your headset or speakerphone (refer to the manual if the process isn’t intuitive). For more on Bluetooth, read Chapter 14.

If you’re listening to music via your iPhone’s built-in Music player or some other audio app when a call comes in, the song stops playing and you have to decide whether to take the call. If you do take the call, after the conversation ends, the music (typically) resumes from where you left off.

Rejecting the call

We’re going to assume that you’re not a cold-hearted person out to break a caller’s heart. Rather, we assume that you're a busy person who will call back at a more convenient time.

Keeping that positive spin in mind, here are a few ways to reject a call on the spot and send the call to voicemail:

• Tap Decline. Couldn’t be easier than that.
• Do nothing and let the call go to voicemail.
• Press the sleep/wake button twice in rapid succession. (The button is on the top of the device.)
• Using the supplied headset, press and hold down the microphone button on the headset for a couple of seconds, and then let go. Two beeps let you know that the call was indeed rejected. On some Bluetooth earpieces, pressing and holding down other buttons do the trick.

Replying with a text message

Sometimes you can’t take a call because, well, you can’t take a call — you’re under the gun at work or the kids demand your attention. But you want to be polite or give callers a sense that you do care about them too. Consider replying with a text message.

When a call comes in, instead of tapping Decline or Accept, simply tap the Message icon that appears, as shown in Figure 4-6. You can select from three canned messages (Sorry, I can’t talk right now; I'm on my way; and Can I call you later?) or create a custom reply.

If your phone is locked, you’ll still have the chance to tap the Message icon and go with one of the aforementioned canned (or custom) messages. But if you want to accept the call, you’ll have to slide your finger along the Slide to Answer button instead of tapping Accept.

When you tap any of these options, the caller will get your outgoing voicemail message and receive whichever of the text options you chose to send.

If you tap Remind Me instead of Message, you can arrange to receive a reminder notification in One Hour or When I Leave (the current location). Meanwhile, the caller hears your voicemail message.

Sometimes you’re perfectly willing to take a call but need to silence the ringer, lest the people sitting near you in the movie theater or corporate boardroom cast an evil eye your way. To do so, press the sleep/wake button a single time or press one of the volume buttons. You’ll still have the opportunity to answer. You can use this technique also to turn off vibration mode.

Blocking callers

We don’t embrace every caller, not by a long shot. Perhaps the caller is an old flame turned stalker. Or the person may be a crud. Or you keep hearing from the same persistent direct marketer, who doesn’t take your “no, thank you” at face value. Fortunately, you get the last word on the iPhone. Go to the Recents list for the caller and tap the i-in-a-circle. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and tap Block This Caller. You will no longer receive phone calls, FaceTime calls, or messages from people on the block list. Although your phone won’t ring, the caller will continue to reach your voicemail and will be able to leave you a message. If the blocked stalker, um, caller returns to your good graces, you can tap Unblock This Caller to let the person's calls through.

Avoiding disturbances

In the middle of the night — or the middle of the day when you’re playing hooky — the last thing you want is to be bothered by a phone call. Apple had such potential disturbances in mind when it devised the Do Not Disturb feature. When you turn on the feature in Settings or in Control Center (see Chapter 5), your incoming calls and alerts will be silenced. A moon icon rises to the top of the status bar to remind you when Do Not Disturb is enabled.

Of course, you may be reluctant to turn on the feature, fretting perhaps about missing emergency calls or calls from family members or important associates. You need exceptions, right?

Right. Here’s how to address those situations when Do Not Disturb is enabled. From the Home screen, tap Settings⇒Do Not Disturb. Tap the Allow Calls From option (see Figure 4-7) and choose whether to allow calls from your Favorites, Everyone (kind of defeats the purpose of Do Not Disturb, eh?), No One, All Contacts, or a particular Group Name from Contacts.

You can also take advantage of the Repeated Calls option. When Repeated Calls is turned on, a second call from the same person within three minutes will not be silenced. The rationale is if somebody is trying to reach you that badly, the call must be important.

You can also schedule when Do Not Disturb is on. Tap Settings⇒Do Not Disturb⇒Scheduled, and flip the switch on. Then tap the From To time field and choose a quiet time.

From the Do Not Disturb settings, you can also silence the iPhone when you receive incoming calls and notifications, or choose to do so only when the phone is locked.

Choosing ringtones

Apple now supplies more than 50 ringtones in its latest iPhones, including 25 of the original or classic ringtones heard when the iPhone was brand new. The oldies but goodies range from the sound of crickets to an old car horn. The newest ringtones carry such names as Hillside, Night Owl, and Twinkle. Read the “iTunes and ringtones” sidebar to figure out how to add more.

To choose a ringtone, follow these steps:

1. From the Home screen, tap Settings.
2. Tap Sounds.
3. Tap Ringtone to access the list of available ringtones.
4. Flick your finger to move up or down the list.
5. Tap any of the ringtones to hear what it will sound like.

   A check mark appears next to the ringtone you’ve just listened to, as shown in Figure 4-8. If need be, adjust the volume slider in Sounds.

6. If you’re not pleased, try another.

   If you’re satisfied, you need do nothing more. Unbeknownst to you, you have just selected that ringtone.

You can easily assign specific ringtones to individual callers. From Contacts, choose the person to whom you want to designate a particular ringtone. Then tap Edit⇒Ringtone to display the aforementioned list of ringtones. Select the one that seems most appropriate (a barking dog, say, for your father-in-law).

To change or delete the ringtone for a specific person, go back into Contacts and tap Edit. Tap Ringtone and then choose a different ringtone for the person or revert to the default.

In the ringtone section of Settings, you can choose whether the phone will vibrate when you get a call. And you can choose various vibration styles (such as a heartbeat or an SOS) and even tap to create your own custom vibration patterns, which you can then name. Ringtones also apply to FaceTime, and a variant, text tones, works with Messages.

While on a Call

You can do lots of things while talking on an iPhone, such as consulting your calendar, taking notes, or checking the weather. Press the Home button to get to the apps that let you perform these tasks.

If you’re using Wi-Fi, 3G, or 4G and are on an AT&T or a T-Mobile iPhone, you can also surf the web (through Safari) while talking on the phone. But you can’t surf while you talk if your only outlet to cyberspace is, say, the pokier AT&T EDGE network or a CDMA network such as the ones that Sprint and Verizon rely on.

Here are other things you can do while on a call:

• Mute a call: From the main call screen (shown in Figure 4-9), tap Mute. Now you need not mutter under your breath when the caller ticks you off. Tap Mute again to unmute the sound.
• Tap Contacts to display the Contacts list: This option is useful if you want to look up a friend’s number while you’re talking to another pal or you want to add someone to a conference call.
• Place a call on hold: Touch and hold down the aforementioned Mute icon. Tap Mute again to take the person off hold. You might put a caller on hold to answer another incoming call or to make a second call yourself. The next section shows you how to deal with more than one call at a time.

  

  

• Tap Keypad to bring back the keypad: This feature is useful if you have to type touchtones to access another voicemail system or respond to an automated menu system. Heaven forbid you actually get a live person when calling an insurance company or airline. But we digress … . Tap Hide to return to the main call screen.
• Use the speakerphone: Tap Speaker to listen to a call through the iPhone’s internal speakers without having to hold the device up to your mouth. If you’ve paired the iPhone with a Bluetooth device, the control is labeled Audio instead, as shown in Figure 4-10. Tap Audio and then tap Speaker (if you want the speakerphone), iPhone (if you want to hold up the phone to your ear), or the name of the Bluetooth device. A check mark appears next to your selection, as shown in Figure 4-11.
• Make a conference call: Read on.

Juggling calls

You can field a new call when you’re already talking to somebody. Or ignore the call (by tapping Ignore).

To take the new call while keeping the first caller on hold, tap Hold and Accept. Tap End & Accept to take the new call and dismiss the current call. You can also tap Send to Voicemail to keep the status quo. Figure 4-12, left, shows these options. You can then toggle between calls (placing one or the other on hold) by tapping either the Swap icon or the first call at the top of the screen, as shown in Figure 4-12, right.

Making conference calls

Now suppose caller number one and caller number two know each other. Or you’d like to play matchmaker so they get to know each other. Tap Merge Calls (the button appears automatically when you've added a second caller) so that all three of you can chitchat. At first, the phone number of each caller will scroll at the top of your screen like a rolling ticker. A few seconds later, the ticker is replaced by the names of the callers.

Now assume you have to talk to your entire sales team at once. It's time to initiate a full-blown conference call, which effectively takes this merge call idea to its extreme. You can merge up to five calls at a time. In fact, creating such a conference call on the iPhone may be simpler than getting the same five people in a physical room at the same time.

Start by making a call and then placing the caller on hold as noted in the preceding section, “Juggling calls.” Tap Add Call to make another call, and then tap Merge Calls to bring everyone together. Repeat this exercise to add the other calls.

Other conference call tidbits:

• If you want to drop a call from a conference, tap the circled i next to the word Conference, and then tap the red End button next to the caller you want to drop to make that caller go bye-bye.
• You can speak privately with one of the callers in a conference. Tap Conference, and then tap Private next to the caller with whom you want to go hush-hush. Tap Merge Calls to bring the caller back into the conference so everyone can hear him or her.
• You can add a new incoming caller to an existing conference call by tapping Hold & Accept followed by Merge Calls.

Handing off calls

Apple, not unlike its rivals in the tech community, wants you to buy into its own ecosystem for hardware and software. So it isn't a surprise that iOS 8 for the iPhone and iPad makes nice with OS X Yosemite, Apple's latest operating system for the Mac. Now you can use an iPad or a Mac to make or answer a call that originated from or was received on an iPhone.

The only caveat is that the devices must all be connected to the same Wi-Fi network. If you’re sitting in front of a Mac or an iPad, you’ll see the name, phone number, and profile picture of a person calling your iPhone, which let us presume for the moment is buried in a bag or charging in another room. From the Mac or iPad, click (or swipe) the notification of the call to answer or reject the call.

To make a call from your Mac or iPad, click or tap a phone number in the Contacts, Calendar, or Safari app. No other setup is required. It is as simple as that. Make sure the Handoff switch is turned on in Settings under Handoff & Suggested Apps.

Seeing Is Believing with FaceTime

FaceTime video reminds us of a favorite line from The Who’s rock opera Tommy: “See me, feel me, touch me.” The “see me” (and for that matter, “see you”) part arrives with FaceTime. Think of all the people who will want to see you, such as an old college roommate living halfway around the world, grandparents living miles away (okay, they really want to see your newborn), or a former flame living in a distant location.

Fortunately, using FaceTime is as easy as making a regular call on the iPhone. Plus, FaceTime comes with at least two major benefits besides the video:

• FaceTime calls don’t count against your regular minutes, though they will count against your data plan allotment if you make these calls over a cellular connection.
• The audio quality on FaceTime calls, at least those over Wi-Fi, can be superior to a regular cellphone connection.

But FaceTime also has a couple of major caveats:

• Both you and the party you’re talking to must have an iPhone 4 or later model, an iPad 2 or later model, a Mac computer, or a 4th-generation or later iPod touch. (Okay, so maybe that’s not much of a caveat after all — the list of compatible devices keeps growing.) Apple is pushing to make FaceTime a video standard that the entire tech industry can embrace, allowing you to someday make FaceTime calls to other handsets and computers that don’t carry an Apple logo and possibly to the television via Apple TV. We’ll see. Skype, among others, also lets you make video calls on the iPhone over a much broader range of devices. Google + is another viable rival.
• Both you and the caller at the other end must access Wi-Fi or a robust cellular connection because the quality of the experience depends on a solid connection. (FaceTime over cellular isn’t available for the iPhone 4 or iPad 2. And FaceTime Audio calling isn’t available on the 4th-generation iPod touch.)

If you meet the requirements, here’s how to make FaceTime happen:

1. The first time you make a FaceTime call to another iPhone, dial the person’s regular iPhone number as usual, using any of the methods we describe in this chapter.

   Or better yet, tap the FaceTime app. Use an email address instead if you’re using FaceTime to call an iPod touch, an iPad, or a Mac.

2. If you did start out with a regular call and you’ve broached the subject of going video, you can tap the FaceTime icon, as shown in Figure 4-13.

   A few seconds later, the other person gets the option to Decline or Accept the FaceTime invitation by tapping the red button or the green button, respectively, as shown in Figure 4-14. If the call is accepted, you’ll need to wait a few seconds before you can see the other person.

You can also use the Siri voice assistant (discussed in detail in Chapter 5) to make a FaceTime call. Just ask Siri to “FaceTime with Dad” or whomever else you’d want to engage in a video call, and Siri will make the proper arrangements.

When someone requests FaceTime with you, you’ll appreciate being able to politely decline a FaceTime call. Cool as it can be to see and be seen, ask yourself if you really want to be seen, say, when you just get out of bed or before your morning coffee.

Search for any FaceTime calls you previously made by tapping an entry for that call in Recents. The iPhone knows to take the call straight to video, though of course the person you’re talking to has to accept the invitation each time.

You can do FaceTime also by tapping a pal’s listings in Contacts.

So what is a FaceTime call like? In our experience, first-time reactions were gleeful. Not only are you seeing the other person, but also the quality of the video is typically good. You also see your own mug (and maybe whoever else is in the room with you) in a small picture-in-picture (PiP) window (as shown in Figure 4-15), which you can drag to a corner of the screen. The PiP image represents what the other person sees, so it’s a good way of knowing, short of the other person telling you, if your face has dropped out of the frame.

As shown in the figure, you can use FaceTime in portrait or landscape mode. You might find it easier to bring another person into a scene in landscape mode.

Apple says that the front camera has been fine-tuned for FaceTime usage, which in photography-speak means the camera has the proper field of view and focal length. But at times, you’ll want to employ the iPhone’s main camera on the rear to best show off your surroundings and give the caller an idea of where you are.

To toggle between the front and main cameras, tap the camera icon.

If you want to mute a FaceTime video call, tap the microphone icon with the slash running through it. The caller won't be able to hear you but can continue to see you.

Although many FaceTime calls commence with a regular AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, or Verizon call, you can’t go from FaceTime to an audio-only call without hanging up and redialing. In the past, if you dropped a FaceTime call because of a Wi-Fi hiccup or some other problem, you had to redial via FaceTime or your provider, depending on whether you wanted the call to be video or only audio.

You can make FaceTime audio-only calls too. Tap the FaceTime app icon, tap Contacts, and then tap the phone icon, which indicates you want to make a FaceTime call without the face. (Tapping the video icon next to a contact listing would make a regular FaceTime video call instead.) From the FaceTime app, you can also designate FaceTime favorites (audio or video), and make FaceTime calls in the Recents log as well. Only FaceTime calls will be shown in Recents, not the regular calls you make over the cellular network.

To block all FaceTime calls, tap Settings from the Home screen, tap FaceTime, and make sure the FaceTime switch is off. If you can’t find the FaceTime button or wonder why you’re not getting FaceTime calls, go back to Settings and make sure this option is turned on. While you're in FaceTime Settings, note that you can list one or more email addresses by which a caller can reach you for a video call, along with your iPhone’s phone number.

If you want to momentarily check out another iPhone app while on a FaceTime call, press the Home button and then tap the icon for the app you have in mind. At this point, you can still talk over FaceTime, but you’ll no longer see the person. Tap the green bar at the top of the screen to bring the person back in front of you.

And there you have it. That’s FaceTime, one of the coolest features in the iPhone.

You can do even more things with iPhone the phone, as you find out when we delve deeper into Settings in Chapter 14. Meanwhile, we recommend that you read the next chapter to discover how you can grab control of your iPhone.