iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

As iPhone users, we use apps every day. From Contacts to Facebook to games and books, we use apps to connect with each other and the world around us. Of course, the more specialized apps are often the most expensive, such as apps marketed toward graphic designers and writers. Games can also come at a high premium, and let’s not forget the trauma of the bill detailing our monthly in-app purchases. We’d all like to shave a few dollars off of how much we spend on apps every month. The good news is that there are legal ways to locate paid apps for free without having to check the App Store every day to catch important sales. This article will show you a few different strategies for finding the apps you need at the price you can afford. You can even keep track of when specific paid apps become free for a limited time!

You’ve just bought a used iPhone off Craigslist and are getting to transfer your SIM card. You boot up your phone and discover that your phone is Restricted; the device you bought is locked into a specific network provider. Now, here’s the good news; it’s possible to unlock a locked phone. Here’s even more good news; if you bought a new phone directly from Apple, then your phone is already unlocked and available for any carrier you choose. How can you tell whether or not a used phone is locked before you make that huge purchase? How can you unlock a locked phone? And how do you check to see if your current phone is locked? We’ll answer all those questions in this article.

If you have the Facebook app on your iPhone, you've agreed to allow Facebook access to all your phone's contacts. If you don't remember giving that permission, neither do I; but apparently, it's part and parcel of the terms of service. Don't worry, though; there's an easy way to change this sharing setting and make the names and numbers in your Contacts app private again. Let's get started learning how to stop Facebook from accessing your Contacts on iPhone. 

How do you earn a five-star rating for something as simple as a car charger? By offering a whole bunch of valuable features. The ChargeHub V2 ($29.99) has two ports, not one, which will be appreciated by other family members. But what really sets the ChargeHub V2 apart is the safety features.

When it comes to charging hubs, you can never have enough outlets or enough power, which is why the ChargeHub X7 ($59.99) is so welcome. It offers a total of seven USB ports and 48 watts of total power. The ports are evenly spaced out along the perimeter of the circular device, which makes it easy to plug and unplug individual cables. It looks nice too. In fact, it comes in assorted colors including translucent green or clear.

I grew up during the transition from typewriters to computers and used both for many years. Even early computers used the clickety-clackety mechanical keyboards that are hard to find these days. If you long for those days, you will want to back the Rymek Keyboard (TBD) when it launches on Indiegogo. I don't know what the price will be, but if you sign up and are an early adopter, you could save 40 percent.

AirPod settings and controls can be a bit unintuitive. How can we turn down volume and turn volume up when there are no buttons and no dials? In fact, we have two options for increasing and decreasing volume on our AirPods. We can either use Siri, or our iPhones to raise or lower the volume on our music, podcast, or phone call. Let's get started learning how.