iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

Depending on which apps or devices you have collecting information, the Health app on your iPhone can track your body measurements, fitness, nutrition, reproductive health, sleep, and more. It’s a great way to get an overview of your activity level and health in general. I particularly like the calendar menu which allows me to select any day and see the stats organized below. Should you want to export your data from your Health app, whether it be to share with a personal trainer or your doctor, here’s how to do it.

Creativity is the spice of life, and technology has made high-end tools available to the everyday person at decent prices. Sure, the iPad is great for watching Netflix or playing games, but I think it really shines when put to use for artistic endeavors. Whether you’re a visual artist, writer, musician, etc. - there is an iPad accessory out there to assist in your creation of art. Here’s five unique accessories I found.

One of the things that frustrated me most when I recently got the iPhone 6s was its size (yes, I was one of those people who longed for the days of my 4-inch iPhone 5s). The problem was that I had a pretty difficult time using the iPhone 6s one handed. Yeah, I get it, there’s that whole Reachability feature that Apple added to help solve this exact issue. But let’s be honest—nobody likes Reachability. I’ve activated the feature a lot since purchasing my phone, but never on purpose. So when I saw the 6Sense Tempered Glass Screen Protector by Avant Guard at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show—which allows you to activate functions located at the top corners of your screen (like the Back and Edit buttons in the Photos app) from the bottom of your screen instead—I was pretty excited by the concept.

The company booq has made a name for itself as a producer of high-quality carryalls. Whether you are looking for a backpack, a messenger bag, a camera bag, or a slim laptop carrier, booq's products offer a fashionable and remarkably rugged way for you to safely transport your tech gear and essential accessories. However, when a company has an extensive lineup of great gear, it can be hard to select the best iPad bag for your purposes. To that end, I've chosen two similar products from the booq catalog to compare and see how they fare as iPad carrying cases. Please note, I'm a big fan of both of these products, but in the end, slight differences made one better than the other in my opinion. 

We’re less than a month away from Apple’s first big event of the year. The latest rumors indicate Apple will hold its keynote event the week of March 21, instead of the previously thought March 15. Apple’s Spring event will likely be slightly smaller in scale; rumors indicate the company will hold the event at the Town Hall Auditorium on the 1 Infinite Loop campus. It was originally thought we’d see a new Apple Watch 2, but the rumor mill seems to now agree that will have to wait until September. Here’s everything you need to know about the products we do expect Apple to release in March.

There are tons of lists for finding a last minute valentine, but what if you don’t want to spend that evening with a stranger just because society tells you to feel bad about yourself if you don’t have a date? I’m just saying, there are plenty of ways to have fun all by yourself this February 14, and I think that makes you an independent, self-sufficient superstar. Here’s five apps to make that date with yourself everything you could have hoped for.

The following infographic was published in the  Spring 2016 issue of iPhone Life magazine. Learn how to get the most from your iPhone by clicking here to subscribe.

Remember Snake, the incredibly simplistic yet addictive mobile game most of us played in the early days of cellphones? Thankfully, apps—the bite sized pieces of software designed for specific tasks—have come a long way since then. It's been almost eight years since Steve Jobs announced the App Store, and now we have more than 1.5 millions apps to choose from. The App Store is undoubtedly one of Apple's most important inventions. Apps have revolutionized the way we do so many things—look no further than Uber, Tinder, and Spotify for proof. And while Steve Jobs didn’t invent mobile apps, he did successfully popularize them. With the App Store, Apple created a vibrant marketplace for creating and selling apps, and as developers strove to compete, they stretched the capabilities of our iPhones by pushing the devices’ functional limits.  Apps are what make the iOS experience so interesting, and that's why we've put together the infographic below to help you learn some little known facts and figures about the rise of Apple's App Store.

When you’re searching for specific information on the web, it’s helpful to be able to locate keywords and find the information you need without having to skim whole articles. Most of us are familiar with doing this on a computer, but you can also search web pages within Safari. This can be especially helpful on a small screen, as it highlights the words you’re looking for and allows you to easily scan through. Here’s how to search a Safari webpage.

Valentine’s Day is nearly here. Sure, you could buy your sweetheart the traditional flowers and chocolate but the best gifts are either handmade or personally selected. If your love happens to be a tech lover as well, why not get them a gift they’ll both use and adore? For him and her, we’ve got a list of awesome V-day gifts for the tech lover in your life from the Keyboard Waffle Maker to a coffee pot you can start from anywhere.

When it comes to powering our multiple devices, it seems there’s no end to the amount of cords and power outlets needed to keep all the batteries charged. Seeking a solution to this disorganization, I gave ChargeHub ($59.99) a try for myself after hearing that a box the size of a hockey puck could handle seven USB chargers at any given time. That means more than just my iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, but also my Bluetooth headphones (one for sports, one for work), activity trackers, battery packs, and more can be charged. So, can ChargeHub really do it all?

There are so many vendors hawking similar products that you gotta have a gimmick in order to stand out. One such category is battery packs. GO PUCK has come up with a product differentiator that could work well. The growth of action cameras like GO PRO means there's more and more of a demand for portable power by extreme sports athletes as well as adventurous types. GO PUCK has an offering tailor made for that crowd.

As we accumulate more apps, we need more screen space to organize them all. You can create multiple Home Screens, allowing you to swipe through Home Screen pages and have access to as many apps as you want. At the bottom of your Home screen, above your stationary Dock apps, are dots indicating how many Home Screen pages you have. If you find you’re running out of space or want to step-up your organization game, here’s how to create a new Home Screen.

First of all, what is augmented reality? It’s a “technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user's view of the real world, thus providing a composite view,” according to Google’s dictionary. What that means is your iPhone works to layer graphics or information on top of your view of reality. For example, an app which locates local restaurants might use Augmented Reality to allow you to hold up your phone and see arrows on the street in front of you, leading to your destination. I expect we’ll see more and more Augmented Reality apps coming to market this year (like Pokemon GO!); here’s five of the coolest app using AR that are available now.

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