10 Superb Things You Did Not Know Your Phone Could Do

5. Read texts out loud

Did you know your smartphone is also able to read things out to you? When you don’t feel like reading, you are not in a position to do so, or perhaps have sight problems, this feature might come in handy for you.

iPhone instructions:

Enter Settings, followed by General and Accessibility. Turn onVoiceOver.

Once you do this, you will have the option to practice with VoiceOver, so that you customize the way things are read to you so it’s easy and practical for you.

When you start using VoiceOver, you can drag your fingers around the home screen to have the names of the apps read out to you (by tapping once). You can enter the respective apps by double tapping on them. You can use VoiceOver while using Maps to have the directions read out to you, while using Camera to know the number of people in your shot, and in photos to listen to a description of the pictures.

Android instructions:

Enter Settings, followed by Accessibility and TalkBack. (Note: If you don’t find this, download it from the Google Play Store). Turn on TalkBack.

This will enable your phone to read to you whatever you touch on the screen. From then after, you will need to use 2 fingers to swipe the screen normally.

To customize the TalkBack settings (such as the speed rate of the voice), go to Settings, followed by Accessibility and Text-to-Speech options.

You can also enable another setting to have your phone tell you who is calling or messaging you, at the moment a call or message is received. To activate it, go to Settings and turn onHands-free mode.

6. Customize alert vibration patterns

With your smartphone, you can not only customize the way your device rings when it’s on normal mode – you can even customize the way it vibrates when it’s on silent mode. You can do this by choosing specific vibration patterns through the setting provided by your phone.

iPhone instructions:

Enter Settings. Go to Sounds, followed by Ringtone, thenVibration. Here, you can create patterns of vibration by tapping.

You can even create a customized vibration pattern for specific contacts. To do this, select the contact you want from your list of contacts, tap Edit and select the Vibration option.

Android instructions:

Go to your contact list and tap on a contact name. UnderVibration Pattern, tap Default and choose a preset pattern.
If you want to create your own pattern, tap Create and tap on the screen to make it.