If you own the 3GS model, it will include the voice dialing option that will enable you to speak to your phone to instruct it to call anyone in your contacts list, dial a specific phone number, play a song in you iPod playlist, etc. Whether your phone is in the sleep mode or not, you simply press and hold the home key until the voice dialing screen appears. Speak your instructions and it will place the call, play the song, etc. automatically. If you plan to use the voice calling feature very often, you should probably contact me so I can give you more specific hints to make the voice calling feature work for you more efficiently. This is what you will see when you activate the voice control function:

To dial a number without using voice calling, you have several different choices and I may not be able to cover them all here.

You can double click your home key to open your favorites window where you can store as many contacts as you wish. They will be listed in the order they were entered, so be sure to enter your most important ones first. That window looks like this:

If you press the Phone icon on your screen, you will see either your favorites, recent calls, contacts, keypad or voicemails. Touch the Recent Calls icon to view recent call, including missed called, received calls and dialed calls (missed calls will be in a red font so they are easy to notice). You can dial anyone in this list by simply touching their name on your screen. Or you can touch the small arrow on the right to see their entire contact information (if they are in your contacts list). The recent calls list can become very long over time so you will probably want to clear it occasionally. As with most list views on the iPhone, you can scroll down the list by simply touching the screen and flicking your finger across the screen in the direction you want it to scroll. Touch the screen again if you want to stop it immediately

If you touch the Contacts icon, you will see all your contacts listed in alphabetical order. To call someone in your contact list, just scroll to their name and touch it. The contact page for that person will be displayed so you can touch the particular phone number you wish to call.

If you prefer, you can touch the Keypad icon to dial the number directly.

Receiving an incoming call

When you receive an incoming call, you phone will display the caller's phone number as well as the name if it is stored in your contacts list. If not, it will display the city and state then call is coming from. You can also attach a photograph to any of your contacts. When that is done, you contact screen will look like this:

When that person calls your phone, you will see the picture you have attached to their contact file. I have attached a home graphic to my home number, so this is what I see when someone calls me from my home:

Missed calls are displayed immediately on your screen so you will see them as soon as you pickup the phone:

When you receive a call, you will see a screen similar to this:

Note that if you use a wallpaper image that is bright and contains lots of colors, this screen will be a little hard to view. I used a picture of mushrooms on a black background and I find it works out nicely. The icons on this screen will enable you to mute the microphone, show the keypad, activate the loudspeaker, add a call for conferencing, place the call on hold or view your contacts, all while the call is active. The iPhone has a sensor built into the screen that senses when you move the phone to your ear and automatically blanks the screen so you don't inadvertently touch one of the buttons on the screen. As you move the phone near your ear, the screen will blank out and as soon as you remove it, the above screen will reappear.

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