are a lot of tech terms to absorb here (iCloud, iTunes, syncing, and so on). Don’t worry. Chapters 3 and 4 covers those settings in more detail.
Know Where to Buy Your iPhone
You can’t buy an iPhone (shown in a variety of colors in Figure 1-2) from every major retail store. You can buy an iPhone at the brick-and-mortar or online Apple Store and from the mobile phone providers AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. You can also find an iPhone at major retailers, such as Best Buy and Walmart, through which you have to buy a service contract for the phone carrier of your choice. You can also find iPhones at several online retailers (such as Amazon.com and Newegg.com) and through smaller, local service providers, which you can find by visiting https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204039.
Image courtesy of Apple, Inc.
See What’s in the Box
When you fork over your hard-earned money for your iPhone, you’ll be left holding one box about the size of a deck of tarot cards.
Here’s what you’ll find when you take off the shrinkwrap and open the box:
❯❯ iPhone: Your iPhone is covered in a thick, plastic-sleeve thingy. Take it off and toss it back in the box.
❯❯ Apple EarPods with Lightning connector: Plug the EarPods into your iPhone 7 or 7 Plus for a free headset experience.
❯❯ Documentation (and I use the term loosely): This typically includes a small pamphlet, a sheet of Apple logo stickers, and a few more bits of information.
❯❯ Lightning to USB Cable: Use this cable to connect the iPhone to your computer, or use it with the last item in the box, the USB power adapter. If you own an iPhone 4s or earlier, you have the Dock Connector to USB Cable, a larger, bulkier, 30-pin connector.
❯❯ Apple USB power adapter: The power adapter attaches to the Lightning to USB Cable so that you can plug it into the wall and charge the battery.
❯❯ Lightning to 3.5mm headphone jack adapter: This adapter will allow you to connect your headphones with 3.5mm jacks to your iPhone 7 or 7 Plus.
That’s all there is in the box. It’s kind of a study in Zen-like simplicity.
Take a First Look at the Gadget
In this section, I give you a bit more information about the buttons and other physical features of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. Figure 1-3 shows you where each of these items is located.
Here’s the rundown on what the various hardware features are and what they do:
❯❯ (The all-important) Home/Touch ID button/sensor: On the iPhone, you can press this button to go back to the Home screen to find just about anything:
● The Home screen(s) displays all your installed and preinstalled apps and gives you access to your iPhone settings. No matter where you are or what you’re doing, press the Home button and you’re back at home base.
● You can also press the Home button twice to pull up a scrolling list of apps so that you can quickly move from one to another (Apple refers to this capability as multitasking).
● If you press and hold the Home button, you open Siri, the iPhone voice assistant.
● With iPhone 5s and later, the Home button contains a fingerprint reader used with the Touch ID feature.
❯❯ On/Off/Sleep/Wake button: You can use this button (whose functionality I cover in more detail in Chapter 3) to power up your iPhone, put it in Sleep mode, wake it up, or power it down.
❯❯ Lightning connector: Plug in the Lightning connector at one end of the Lightning to USB Cable that came with your iPhone to charge your battery, listen to audio with your EarPods, or sync your iPhone with your computer (which you find out more about in Chapter 4).
❯❯ Ring/Silent switch: Slide this little switch to mute or unmute the sound on your iPhone.
❯❯ Built-in stereo speakers: One nice surprise when I got my first iPhone was hearing what a nice little sound system it has and how much sound can come from the tiny speakers. The speakers in iPhone 7 and 7 Plus provide rich stereo sound, and are located on the bottom edge of the phone and at the top part near the earpiece.
❯❯ Volume up/down buttons: Tap the volume up button for more volume and the volume down button for less.
❯❯ Built-in microphones: Built-in microphones make it possible to speak into your iPhone to deliver commands or content. This feature allows you to do such things as
● Make phone calls using the Internet
● Use video calling services, such as Skype
● Work with other apps that accept audio input, such as the Siri built-in assistant.
Chapter 2
Exploring the Home Screen
IN THIS CHAPTER
❯❯ See what you need to use iPhone
❯❯ Turn on iPhone for the first time
❯❯ Meet the multi-touch screen
❯❯ Say hello to tap and swipe
❯❯ Display and use the onscreen keyboard
