iPhone For Dummies, 13th Edition

Chapter 4

Understanding the Phone-damentals

IN THIS CHAPTER

Making a call

Visualizing visual voicemail

Receiving a call

Facing up to FaceTime

You may well have bought an iPhone for its spectacular photo viewer, its marvelous widescreen display, its multimedia capabilities, and the best darn pocket-sized Internet browser you’ve ever come across. Not to mention its overall coolness.

However, it’s easy to forget that, for many of us, the iPhone’s most critical mission is the one from which its name is derived: The iPhone is first and foremost a cellphone. And no matter how capable it is at all those other things, when push comes to shove, you had best be able to make and receive phone calls.

That requirement puts a lot of responsibility in the hands of AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon, the iPhone’s main (but not only) wireless carriers in the United States. As with any cellphone, the strength of the wireless signal depends a great deal on your location and the robustness of the carrier’s network.

As noted in Chapter 1, the cell signal status icon at the upper-left or upper right ...