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The iPhone 4′s operating system represents a significant improvement on earlier versions of Apple’s smartphone operating system. It’s also got a new name – iOS – signifying the importance of the iPad alongside the iPhone.

And what’s more, iOS 4 is available to users of the iPhone 3GS, third-gen iPod touch and 3G too (albeit with limited features with the latter). iOS 4 will be available for the iPad later in the year.

We’ve delved right under the hood of the new iPhone to bring you some essential iOS4 and iPhone 4 tips.

Lock the screen orientation

If you’re lying in bed reading an iBook or a page in Safari it can be annoying when the iPhone’s orientation keeps flicking between portrait and landscape. You can solve this by activating the new Portrait Lock. Double tap the Home button to reveal all the running apps, then swipe your finger to the right to reveal iPod controls and the Portrait Lock.

Tap to focus/zoom in Camera

The iPhone 4′s new 5 megapixel camera has a fantastic digital zoom. But to activate it you first need to focus on an object – like a face, for example, in your view. Do this by simply tapping anywhere on the screen. A white square will appear showing you the object that the iPhone is focused on. A zoom bar will also appear, which you can use to zoom into the object you’ve picked.

Multitasking: update your apps

Multitasking is one of the big new features of iOS4, but while all Apple’s apps (like Calculator and iPod) are compatible, all third party apps will need to be upgraded to properly multitask. So, you’ll need to head to the App Store app on your phone, then visit the Updates section to download a update for each app. This can take a while, but don’t forget, the App Store app also multitasks (as it always has), so double tap the Home button to get back to it to save time after selecting each update. There’s also a handy “Update all” button to tap.

Switch to UK English

If you’re getting annoyed that your iPhone thinks colour should be spelt without a ‘u’ it’s because you’ve got English (US) selected. You can easily switch back to English (UK) for spell checking by tapping the globe button next to the space bar in any app that brings up the soft keyboard (like Mail or Notes). This toggles your iPhone between English (UK) and English (US).

Multitasking: kill a running app

After you’ve been using your iPhone for a while double-tap the Home button to see how many apps you have running – it will be more than you think! Normally you just let the iPhone decide how many it can keep running at once, but you can take matters into your own hands by killing running apps here. Just tap and hold on a running app and a “-” button appears against all of them. Tap this to kill the app.

Add an accent on the e and a key

It’s possible to quickly add a variety of accents to the letters “e” and “a” when typing on the iPhone’s keyboard. Just tap and hold on either key to reveal more options, like “e”, for example.

Turn caps lock on

If you want to change your typing to capital letters all the time, rather than just for the next letter, then double-tap on the Shift key on the iPhone’s keyboard. It will now turn blue, indicating caps lock is on. Just tap it again to turn it off.

Camera: take a picture of yourself

The iPhone 4 has a front and rear-facing camera. The rear-facing camera is the high quality 5 megapixel one, and the front facing camera (used mainly for FaceTime video chat) is lower VGA resolution. This means it’s now easy to take a picture of yourself (something that was pretty difficult on the previous iPhone models). In the Camera app just tap the Switch button at the top right to change cameras from rear to front.

Camera: email a video of yourself talking

You can also use the forward facing camera for recording video, and the iPhone 4′s second microphone means it works well capturing anything you say too. In the Camera app tap the switch icon (as in tip 8) then change to video mode using the slider and record a video of yourself talking. Now select it in the Camera roll then tap the Forward icon and select Email Video – job done!

Make and rename folders

Organising your apps is so much easier on iPhones running iOS4. Just tap and drag apps on top of each other and you create intelligently named folders. You can rename the folder names Apple chooses though – just tap and hold on an app to make them wiggle, then tap on the folder name and start typing.

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Sometimes the solution to a problem is right in front of you. You just have to take the time to notice it—or at least find out about it. Such was the case for me with two separate iTunes-related matters.

The missing artist

I connected my iPhone to iTunes and went to the Artists listing in the iPhone’s Music tab. Much to my surprise, the artist I intended to select did not appear in the list. I confirmed that the artist’s songs were still in my iTunes Library on my Mac. So why wasn’t the musician showing up on the iPhone’s list? Searching the Web, I located the answer at an iTunes & iPod Hints & Tips Web page.

It turns out that, if the “Part of a compilation” option is enabled for an album, the music from that album does not affect the iPhone’s Artists list. As a consequence, if the only music you have for a particular artist is from a compilation album, that artist will not appear in the Artists list at all.

This can make some sense—I suppose—for an album that consists of a collection of songs by different artists (compiled from other original albums)—especially if the artists in the compilation album are listed only as “Various Artists.” My problem, however, was with a “greatest hits” album where the music was all by the same artist. It clearly made no sense for this artist to be omitted from my iPhone’s Artists list.

Happily, the solution is simple and what you might expect:

* In iTunes, highlight all the songs for the compilation album, select Get Info (via Command-I or the command in the File menu)
* From the Options tab, change the “Part of a compilation” option to “No.” Click OK.

After I did this, the missing artist showed up in the iPhone’s Artist list.

Note: If you select Get Info for a single song, the Compilation option is located at the bottom of the Info tab rather than in the Options tab.

Book file clutter

In iTunes, there’s a big difference between an audiobook (as you might purchase from audible.com) and a book on CD (as you might purchase from Borders). The former imports as one file (or as a very small number of files) that encompasses the entire book. With the latter, each disc typically contains several dozen small file segments (often with meaningless sequential names like 2a, 2b 2c). For a book that spans 10 CDs, you might have to import hundreds of small files to get the entire book in iTunes.

Having all of these files in your iTunes Library winds up being an annoying source of clutter. Most notably, it can make it difficult to keep track of where you currently are in your book listening. Were you last at 3c or 4f or 4j or what?

Fortunately, there’s a wonderfully effective solution:

* Insert a CD and wait for it to appear in iTunes. If you get the message asking if you would “like to import the CD,” say “No.”
* Choose Select All (Command-A) for the contents of the CD.
* Select “Join CD Tracks” from iTunes’ Advanced menu. Warning: You cannot select this for a book already in iTunes; you must do it before you import a CD.
* Now click the Import CD button.

The result is that all the files on the CD will be combined into just one file in iTunes! This means that the number of files for an entire book will equal only the number of CDs for the book. This is a much more manageable number. You can easily give meaningful titles to the files, as needed. Put all of a books’ files in sequential order in a playlist to further assist in keeping track.

Having done this, you’ll also want to be able to keep track of where within each file you last left off. You can accomplish this after completing the import: Select Get Info for all the files in a book and then select Yes from the “Remember position” popup menu in the Options tab.

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