Settings for What iPhone Looks Like, Sounds Like, and Reports

The next bunch of settings control what the iPhone reports back to you, what the phone sounds like, and what it looks like.

Notifications

One of the biggest additions that came to the iPhone via the iOS 5 upgrade was Notification Center, discussed in Chapter 2. By swiping down from the top of the screen, you can receive a variety of notifications, from missed calls and texts to appointments.

Under Notifications Settings, you can choose which apps report information in Notification Center and choose whether these apps should be sorted manually or by time, that is, the order in which they come in. After you determine which apps belong in Notification Center, tap the app listing in the In Notification Center roster and choose an alert style (a banner that appears at the top of the screen momentarily before it disappears or an alert, which requires you to do something before it goes away).

App developers can send you alerts related to the programs you’ve installed on your iPhone by exploiting the Apple Push Notification service. Such alerts are typically in text form but may include sounds as well. Or they may appear in a little circle affixed to the app icon as numbered badges. You can receive such alerts even when the app isn’t running.

You can turn off notifications for individual apps. Simply tap an app in the In Notification Center list, and turn on or off the app’s sounds, alerts, or badges. Figure 14-4 shows available ...

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