7 tips and tricks for the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus

So you’re mighty proud of yourself for landing a gleaming new iPhone 7 or 7 Plus? Well you should be, they’re proper lovely, they are. Did you know about all the new things they can do though?

The new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus obviously come with newer, shiner hardware and faster internals, but there are some less obvious tricks they’re capable of performing too, tucked away beneath their gleaming exteriors.

We’ve thoughtfully (you’re welcome) laid them out in plain sight for you, so you can school your mates with your newfound iExpertise:

How to hard reset

The universal law of technology explicitly states that turning your device off and on again solves everything. Unless perhaps it’s on fire. But in general, a reset works wonders, and the new iPhone 7 is no different.

However, the new Home button isn’t mechanical anymore, which means that when your iPhone gets stuck, you wouldn’t be able to perform the traditional hard reset by pressing both the Home and power buttons at the same time.

Luckily there’s a new method which is just as easy – hold down both the power and volume down buttons till the screen turns black and the Apple logo shows up to tell you that everything is a-ok.

Go hard or go home

On the topic of the new Home button – if you’re not quite getting on with the new haptic feedback, you can change how it feels.

Hop into Settings > General > Home Button to choose the click intensity you’re most comfortable with. There are three different levels to cater to your sensitive side – 1 for shallow and 3 for deep – and you can try them out in real time before you commit to one.

Zoom in on real life

This is a great trick for people who need a bit of optical help. With iOS 10, your iPhone can double up as a magnifying glass. Go into Settings > General > Accessibility to turn Magnifier on. Bear in mind it’s different from Zoom, which applies for actual on-screen things on your iPhone.

Once that’s all switched on, all you have to do is triple press your Home button to get into Magnifier mode, so you can finally start finding Wally in style.

Related › 7 of the best iPhone 7 accessories

Lock your lens for video recording

It’s no secret the iPhone 7 Plus’ dual camera setup gives users up to 2x optical zoom and 10x digital zoom when taking photos. This feature is also applicable when it comes to making home videos, although it’s limited to 2x optical and 6x digital zoom, which requires some automatic switching from the wide angle to the telephoto lens on your dual-eyed iPhone 7 Plus.

To prevent the inevitable flicker that lens switching will give, you can lock your lens by heading into Settings > Photos > Camera >Record Video, and choose to Lock Camera Lens. This will prevent you from going below 2x zoom if you start recording from a 2x zoom. That means no ugly judder when you play back your epic snowboarding video.

Don’t short-circuit your iPhone

We know the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus have no fear of water – at least up to one metre of water for 30 minutes. However, there are some things you should do after your iPhone has come up for air. Wipe it dry and don’t go charging it for at least 5 hours unless you want to fry your new iPhone.

Don’t you dare pop open the SIM tray either – you don’t want water to find its way in. Air-drying it should be just fine, don’t go sticking a Q-tip into its Lightning port.

Related › Apple Watch Series 2 review

3D Touch more

3D Touch isn’t new, but it has more useful features than ever before. 3D Touch-ing the Settings icon, for example, gives you the ability to jump quickly into Wi-Fi, cellular data, and battery options without having to scroll through Settings’ many facets. You can also 3D Touch the flashlight icon in the Control Centre to choose your light intensity.

Another very useful 3D Touch feature is the one which lets you prioritise app downloads. If you’ve started mass downloading a bunch of apps after a trip to the App Store and you’re dying to get into one more than the others, 3D Touching the app in question allows you to download it first.

Wonderful world of widgets

Swipe to the right on your lock and/or home screen, and you’ll access your list of widgets – bite-sized previews of your favourite apps which you can then jump into right away.

Scroll right to the bottom of your widget list to add or take away as many as you please, or shift them up and down the list. You even get a handy little reminder that tells you if there are any new widgets you can add to the list. Thanks to these, you won’t even need to hop in and out of any apps. You’re only limited by your imagination. And your battery life, we suppose.