Now that your iPhone is powered up, you may want to protect its beautiful look and feel to ensure your iPhone stays brand new inside as well as out.

The iPhone, in contrast to the iPod, has a brushed metal back, which doesn’t scratch or smudge easily, if at all. The front of the iPhone isn’t quite so durable. Basically you’ve got one gorgeous slab of glass lying atop your iPhone. This class is actually quite durable, and after logging hundreds of hours with my iPhone nestled in my pocket, I’ve yet to incur any scratches, nicks, dents, or anything else that could fall under the damage category. However, that’s me, and I admittedly handle my iPhone with kid gloves. Depending on what kind of an owner you are, you might want to consider one of many screen protectors available for the iPhone. Screen protectors provide a transparent shield of plastic between your gorgeous slab of glass and the larsh would of pointy things surrounding it

No matter how careful you are with your iPhone, the biggest danger is an unprotected drop onto a hard surface. The most compelling reason you might want to grab yourself some sort of iPhone case is to ward off – or at least partially protect against – the internal and external damage that dropping your iPhone could cause. Cosmetic damage is a bummer: Your iPhone won’t look as new and shiny. Internal damage can mean the end of your iPhone.

You’ve made the purchase and you made in home – with a quick stop at book store to pick up the book you’re currently holding – and you’re ready to start using the phone. Not so fast, hot shot. You’ve got some setting up to do. Your first step is activation. Instead of waiting inside a cell phone store, you actually set up teh iPhone yourself using Apple’s music management software called iTunes. Here’s how you do it.

1. If you are already running an Apple OS X machine purchased in the last couple of years, you probably already have iTunes installed. Windows users may or may not have already installed iTunes. Never mind that, because you want to make sure you have the latest version anyway. Open up a web browser and type apple(dot)com/itunes/download into the address bar. (more…)

The iPhone is, first and foremost, a cell phone, However, as Apple Inc’s CEO Steve Jobs said when unveiling the iPhone at MacWorld 2009, it’s these three devices integrated together that makes the iPhone such a remarkable piece of hardware. More specifically, the thing that makes the iPhone as such so great isn’t even in the hardware itself – the secret sauce is in the software.

That’s right – it’s the software that makes the iPhone such a revolutionary phone. Not only does the iPhone have easy-to-access speed dial lists, call history, and contacts, but there’s a giant traditional dial pad as well. But most phones have this already, you say, so what’s different here? In one world: integration. It’s in the way that you can easily bring up your friends addresses in Google Maps, the flawles way they sync with Address Book on the Mac and Outlook on the PC, and the convenient way you can quickly assign unique ringtones and pictures to all your contacts. These functions are present to other phones, of course, but they require a Batman-like level of technical knowledge to get to.

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