Tips

Some iPhone applications have preferences to set an accelerometer lock, which keeps the orientation of the app in one direction no matter which way the iPhone turns. Unfortunately, most commonly used apps do not have this feature.

Rotation can be switched off when viewing photos on the iPhone Camera Roll or Photo Library. When viewing a photo, hold down with one finger on the photo as if you're trying to copy the image.

Sometimes backing up the iPhone in iTunes during a sync takes a while. According to Apple, now there's a new way to speed up the process.

Backup times can suffer when there are a large number of photos or videos on the Camera Roll. To speed up your iPhone backup the media files must be imported to your computer, removed from the camera roll, and re-synced to the iPhone.

Worried that upgrading your shiny Mac to Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) for $29 will screw up your iPhone? No worries. Dev-Team has announced the Snow Leopard upgrade does not affect the redsn0w jailbreak or the ultrasn0w unlock.

Next on the horizon from Apple is the iPhone 3.1 update, possibly coming our way this month. AT&T is expected to release an MMS update on September 25 using iTunes.

Surprise! The popular iPhone app Yelp has a secret feature that overlays nearby points of interest on live video of your surroundings. This augmented reality feature is available in Yelp version 3.0.0 on iPhone 3GS.

To turn on the feature, called Monocle, make sure "Location Services" are ON. Launch Yelp and select the "Nearby" screen from the bottom menu. Now gently twist or shake the iPhone a few times until the dialog box stating "The Monocle is activated" appears.

Users are reporting a bug in iPhone firmware 3.0 that prevents photos from appearing on the camera roll. Although image files are present on the device and can be copied with iPhoto, thumbnails are hidden on the camera roll.

The camera roll even counts the correct number of photos as it hides a portion of the files. Users have determined the problem arises when numbers in photo filenames exceed 10,000. For some reason the iPhone OS 3.0 camera roll does not display these files.