iPhone 5 Portable Genius

Operating the Touchscreen

I can’t get enough of the touchscreen on the iPhone, and I think it’s the phone’s best feature, by far. You can zoom in and out, scroll through lists, drag items here and there, and even type messages. Amazingly, the touchscreen requires no external hardware to do all this. You don’t need a stylus or digital pen, and you don’t need to attach anything to the iPhone. Instead, the touchscreen requires just your finger (or, for some operations, a couple of fingers).

Navigating the touchscreen

There are a few maneuvers that you need to be familiar with to successfully use the touchscreen in all its glory. Take some time to try these out now. I’ll refer to these gestures throughout the rest of the book, so play around and make sure you understand them.

Tap. This means that you use your finger to quickly press and release the screen where desired. This gesture is what you use to initiate just about any action on the iPhone. This opens applications, activates options, enters text boxes, and much more.

Double-tap. This is what it sounds like: two quick taps with your finger. In applications such as Photos or Safari, it zooms in on images or chunked parts of web pages. A second double-tap zooms back out.

Swipe and flick. To swipe means to drag your finger across ...