7 Tips and tricks for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus

Minimise management headaches with these time-saving iOS 8 shortcuts.

The iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus have been selling like hotcakes, shifting 10 million units on its opening weekend alone. Both new iPhones come with iOS 8 out of the box, bringing plenty of new features. So which ones are worth your time? Here are seven of our favourites.

1. Take and make calls from your iPad or Mac

With ‘Handoff’ you can now receive calls on your iPad or Mac while your iPhone remains buried in your bag or charging in another room.

To set this up, simply sign in with the same iCloud account on all your iDevices and Mac. You can also make calls from your iPad or Mac by simply tapping on a phone number within the Safari web browser, email or calendar. Note that Macs will need to be running OS X 10.10 Yosemite which is due to be released later this month, October, for this feature to work. You will also need to ensure that your devices are all connected to the same Wi-Fi network.

Apps also support Handoff so you can for example, start working on an email or document on your iPhone and pick up precisely where you left off from your Mac or iPad with a simple swipe from the lock screen.

SEE ALSO: Seven important features of iOS 8

2. Charge your iPhone 6 quicker with an iPad charger

The new iPhones take a painfully long time to charge especially the iPhone 6 Plus which takes almost four hours to go from completely flat to 100 per cent charge.

You can significantly cut down the charging time by using an iPad charger instead, which supports 2.1A/12W of power.

3. Family Sharing 

If you find your children snatching your devices out of your hands the moment you get home, you’re going to love this new feature. You can finally share purchased apps and iTunes content with up to six people in your family and you don’t need to give up your iTunes password to make it happen either. Besides the big cost saving you’ll see from no longer having download the same app on multiple devices, it will also hopefully mean you’ll come home to less squabbling after a long day at work.

‘Family Sharing’ also includes the ability to review app purchase requests made by anyone in the family, which should hopefully put an end to bill shock for many parents.

If you provide your staff with work phones, it’s also a great feature to make use.

Simply go to Settings > iCloud > Family Sharing and enter the email addresses of those who you would like to add to family sharing.

4. Find your iPhone

If your iPhone goes missing then you should be able to track it down by using ‘Find my iPhone’ which can be accessed from www.icloud.com or by using the ‘Find my iPhone’ app.

Find my iPhone will pinpoint the location of your missing iDevice on a map and you can also remotely lock your device and send it a message with a contact number.

You can check whether this feature is activated on your iPhone by going to Settings > iCloud > Find my iPhone. Also be sure to enable the ‘Send last location’ setting as this will automatically send the last known whereabouts of the device before the battery dies. 

SEE ALSO: Should you upgrade to the new iPhone?

5. Reachability 

The iPhone 6 Plus is a behemoth of a smartphone that demands two handed operation most of the time but here’s a handy tip for when you don’t have both hands free.

Simply double tap the home button to make the entire screen shift down closer to your thumb, making it possible to use most apps one handed, a great feature for multitasking.

6. Landscape mode

If you’re an iPhone 6 Plus owner and you regularly use apps like Mail, Reminders, Notes and Calendar then be sure to take advantage of landscape mode to see more of your content. For example, holding your phone in landscape orientation will automatically split your inbox into two panes with your emails on the left and the open email on your right.

The virtual keyboard also supports a special landscape mode which gives you access to additional buttons like copy, paste, bold and undo.

7. Swap out keyboards 

A good virtual keyboard can make a big difference in how quickly you get things done on a smartphone and with Apple finally opening up alternative keyboards on iOS, your favourite keyboards like Swype and SwiftKey are just a download away.

After downloading the keyboard from the App store, simply go to Settings > General > Keyboards > Keyboards > Add New Keyboard and select your downloaded keyboard. Now the next time the keyboard appears, simply tap the globe icon and select the desired keyboard from the list. Say goodbye to embarrassing Autocorrect messages to clients.