In this chapter, you’ll explore all the cell phone functionality that iPhone has to offer. The topics include the following:
Configuring the New Text Message sound
Receiving and replying to text messages
7 Text Messaging
Text messaging enables you to have conversations with other people and to communicate information quickly and easily. iPhone has the Short Message Service (SMS) application that you can use to send, receive, and converse via text messages. You can maintain any number of conversations with other people at the same time, and iPhone lets you know whenever you receive a new message.
iPhone’s text messages are sent via the cell network based on telephone numbers. You can send text messages to and receive messages from anyone who has a cell phone capable of text messaging (and most are these days).
Configuring the New Text Message Sound
When you receive a new text message, iPhone plays an alert tone so that you know a message has arrived. You can choose the alert sound you want to hear or disable this sound if you don’t want to hear it.
>>>step-by-step
1. Move to the Home screen and press Settings. The Settings screen appears.
2. Press Sounds. The Sounds screen appears.
3. Press New Text Message. The New Text Message screen appears.
4. Press the sound you want to hear when a new message arrives. You hear the sound you selected; if you don’t want any sound to play, press None.
Whenever a new text message arrives, you’ll hear the sound you selected (unless you selected None, in which case new messages will arrive with no audio fanfare, or if you have muted iPhone).
Sending Text Messages
You can send text messages by entering a number manually or by choosing a contact from your contacts list. (For help configuring your contacts, see Chapter 2, “Managing Contacts.”)
>>>step-by-step
1. On the Home screen, press SMS. The Text Messages screen appears.
2. Press New Message. The New Message screen appears.
Change Your Mind?
To remove a contact from the To box, press it once so it becomes highlighted in blue and then press the Delete key on the keyboard.
3. If the person to whom you are sending the message is not in your contacts, skip to step 8. If the person is in your contacts, press Add Contact. The All Contacts screen appears.
4. Scroll on the screen to find the contact to whom you want to send a message. (Remember that you can press a letter on the index to quickly jump to a section of the contacts list.)
5. Press the contact to whom you want to send the message. If the person you select has more than one phone number, the contact’s Info screen opens so you can choose the number to which you are going to send the message. If there is only one number for the contact, that number is used for the new message automatically, you return to the New Message screen where you see the contact’s name in the To field, the cursor is placed in the Send box, and you can skip to step 10.
6. If the contact has more than one number, press the number to which you want to send the text message. You return to the New Message screen; the name of the contact you selected is shown in the To field, and the cursor is moved into the Send box. Skip to step 10.
8. Enter the number to which you want to send the text message. As you type, iPhone tries to match the number you type to someone on your contacts list; it presents a list of numbers and contacts that it thinks matches; press one of these to select it. If the number isn’t found, keep entering it until it’s complete.
9. Press the Send bar. The cursor moves into it, the keyboard appears, and if the number you entered matches a number in your contacts, the contact’s name replaces the number in the To field. If not, the number remains as you entered it.
10. If you want to send the message to more than one recipient, press to the right of the current recipient and use steps 2 through 9 to enter the delivery information, either by selecting a contact or entering a phone number. As you add recipients, they appear in the To field.
11. Type the message you want to send in the Send bar (if the cursor isn’t there already, press in the Send bar to move it there before you type).
12. Press Send. The Send status bar appears as the message is sent.
When it’s complete, you see a new conversation screen if the message was not sent to someone you were previously text messaging with, or you move back to the existing conversation screen if you already have a text message conversation going with the recipient.
Receiving and Replying to Text Messages
When you receive a new text message, you hear the new message sound (unless you’ve turned it off or muted iPhone) and see the new message window on iPhone’s screen.
>>>step-by-step
1. Read the message.
2. Press Close if you want to ignore the message for now; you can always read it later. (See the section Working with Text Messages. in this chapter for details.) Skip the rest of these steps.
3. To reply to the message, press Reply. You move to the conversation screen, and the Send bar appears.
Messages While iPhone Sleeps
If you receive a text message while iPhone is sleeping, you hear the new text message alert sound, and iPhone wakes up temporarily. The message text, without any controls, appears on the Locked iPhone screen. If you don’t do anything about it, the message stays on the screen for a few seconds and then disappears while iPhone returns to its slumber.
5. Type your reply.
6. Press Send. The message is sent, and you see your message added to the conversation.
7. If the person replies to you immediately, read the reply on the left side of the screen under your message.
8. Repeat steps 5 through 7 to reply and read replies to you.
9. Press Messages. You move to the Text Message screen on which you see all the text message conversations in progress.
Working with Text Messages
As you send and receive messages, the interaction you have with each person becomes a separate text conversation, consisting of all the messages that have gone back and forth. You manage these conversations from the Text Messages screen.
>>>step-by-step
Conversing in Text
You use the SMS application to manage your text messages.
1. On the Home screen, press SMS. The Text Messages screen appears. On this screen, you see each conversation you have going. The name of the conversation is the name of the person associated with it. If a person can’t be associated with it, you see the number you are conversing with. If the message is such that you can’t reply to it (for example, when you request information about your AT&T account), you see a number of some sort.
How Many Messages Do I Have?
As you receive new text messages, a red circle on the SMS button on the Home screen indicates the number of new messages you have received. When you read a new message, this number is reduced so that it always indicates how many messages you’ve received but not read.
2. Scroll the list to see all the conversations you have on-going.
3. Press a conversation you want to read or reply to. The conversation screen appears; the name of the screen is the person with whom you are conversing—or her number if she isn’t in your contacts list.
4. Read the messages in the conversation. Your messages are on the right side of the screen in green, whereas the other person’s are on the left in gray. Messages are organized so that the newest message is at the bottom of the screen.
5. Scroll the conversation screen to see all the messages it contains.
6. If you don’t want to add to the conversation, skip to step 10. To add a new message to the conversation, press the Send bar. The keyboard appears.
7. Type your message.
8. Press Send. The message is sent, and you see your message added to the conversation.
9. Repeat steps 7 and 8 as long as you want to keep conversing.
10. Scroll to the top of the screen.
11. To call the person with whom you’re conversing, press Call.
12. To see the person’s contact information, press Contact Info.
13. When you’re done, press Messages. You return to the Text Messages screen and see the most recent message in the conversation shown with the date and time it was sent.
Clearing a Conversation
Old text conversations never die, nor do they fade away. All the messages you receive from a person stay in the same conversation. Over time, you can build up a lot of messages in one conversation. When a conversation gets too long, you can clear it.
1. Move to a conversation containing an abundance of messages.
2. Press Clear.
3. Press Clear Conversation at the prompt. All the messages are removed from the conversation, but the conversation itself remains. The next time you get a message from the same person, it will be added to the existing conversation.
Deleting a Conversation
If a conversation’s time has come, you can delete it.
1. Move to the Text Messages screen.
2. Press Edit. Unlock buttons appear next to each conversation.
3. Press the Unlock button next to the conversation you want to delete. The Delete button appears.
4. Press Delete. The conversation is removed.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 to remove more conversations.
6. When you’ve deleted all you want, press Done. You return to the Text Messages screen.
A Faster Way
Another way to delete a conversation is to drag your finger over it to the left or right. The Delete button appears. Press the Delete button to delete the conversation.