Actual tips and tricks for the iPhone have been hard to come by; most of its functionality is right there, out in the open. But here’s something worth noting: In Safari on the iPhone, holding your finger down on a link pops up a balloon displaying the underlying URL. Interesting and somewhat useful, right? (This is actually documented on page 53 of the iPhone’s downloadable user guide.)
Turns out this feature also works on HTML messages in Mail; holding your finger on a link shows you where the URL is really going to take you. This is a handy way to make sure that the PayPal “account update” email you received is really going to take you to the PayPal site.
Now if only that pop-up balloon also gave you the option to open the link in a new window…
did`nt buy an i phone but went to the apple store to see it and it was worth the drive
You're a fool to believe that any Paypal "update" message will take you to the real Paypal site. Paypal does not contact users to "update" their information. Bad example of an example!
Everyone's seen those bogus PayPal messages; they're probably the most common phishing messages on the 'net. So although I may have worded the sentence poorly -- implying that there are actually legitimate such messages ;-) -- I think it's a perfect example of why this feature is useful.
A related trick is the really neat way that the iPhone displays pull-down menu choices when you tap their window, sort of like the date/time function in iCal.
This even fixes those incredibly irritating pull-downs on some sites that ask you to choose your model of {whatever} and the huge list stretches off your screen and down the stairs [g].
-dan