Check Battery Status of Connected Devices from iOS Notification Center

Notification Center on iPhone and iPad includes an optional widget that allows users to check the battery life of other devices connected through Bluetooth. Essentially this means you can quickly see what the remaining battery percentage of not just the device in hand, but also of an Apple Watch from an iPhone, or keyboard battery life from an iPad, all without having to access the device itself.

Additionally, the batteries widget allows users to see whether a connected device is charging or not.Here’s how you can access this handy Battery check feature, given the device has iOS 9 or later installed and there are connected Bluetooth devices:

1. From anywhere in iOS, swipe down from the top of the screen to reveal Notification Center, then tap on the “Today” tab if you’re not already there
2. Look for the “Batteries” section to view the battery life, charge status, and percentage remaining of each device connected through Bluetooth

Simple, and helpful. The little lightning bolt icon indicates the device is connected to the charger.

If you don’t see the Batteries section, confirm that you’re in the Today section of Notification Center. If nothing is visible in the list, you need to enable the battery list by scrolling to the bottom of the Notification Center screen, tap on “Edit” and then locate the Battery listing and add it manually.

How useful this is to you is likely dependent on whether or not you use a paired Apple Watch, external Bluetooth speakers, an external Bluetooth keyboard, and other related hardware paired with an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. If you use none of those accessories, then simply showing the percentage remaining at the top of the iPhone screen is likely sufficient for getting an idea of what individual device battery remaining is.

One thing this feature is missing which would be a great addition? The ability to check a related MacBook battery, as well as seeing the remaining battery of other iOS devices, perhaps in a future version we’ll gain such a function.

iPhone Home button not working or unresponsive? Try this fix to recalibrate it

You may have noticed that over time your iPhone or iPad’s Home button becomes less responsive. If you press the button it either results in a delay, lag or sometimes is completely unresponsive, forcing you to click multiple times.

Here’s an old trick to recalibrate your iPhone or iPad’s Home button if you’re finding it little unresponsive or laggy. You don’t need to take it apart for it.

How to recalibrate your iPhone’s or iPad’s unresponsive Home button:

All you need to do is follow these simple instructions:

1. Launch any app such as Stocks, Weather, etc. that comes pre-installed with your iPhone or iPad.

2. Press and hold the Power (Sleep/Wake) button until you “slide to power off” slider appears on the screen.

3. Release the power button and now press and hold the Home button until the “slide to power off” slider goes away.

That’s it. You will notice that it kills the app. You will also notice that the home button is a lot more responsive.

This is quite an old trick to recalibrate the Home button if it becomes unresponsive. It is not clear why this works, and what’s the significance of using a stock app. But it seems to work, and certainly made the Home button on my iPhone 6 Plus more responsive. I haven’t been forced to click multiple times after trying this trick.

This should also work with iPad and iPod touch Home buttons. If your Home button doesn’t work even after trying this trick, then it is quite possible that it is a hardware issue, and you need to get it repaired. Alternatively, you can also use Assistive Touch (Settings > General > Accessibility > Assistive Touch), which enables an on-screen Home button.

iPhone or iPad not charging? Try this simple tip for a solution

If you find that your iPhone isn’t charging with your Lightning cable anymore, try this simple tip for a solution.

According to reddit user bedell37, a little tinkering around the Lightning port with a toothpick should do the trick, and get your iPhone to charge again. He writes:

Was at dinner with a friend who works for Apple. Told him my charger wasn’t working, so he went to the front of the restaurant and got a toothpick. Started picking in the lightning charger input, picking out tons of lint. Like it had to be BURIED in there. He said phone gets lint built up in the pocket. Picked it out, and it’s good to go. Said they would probably have charged me at the Apple store, but it took all of 2 minutes.

I doubt an Apple Store would actually charge you for such a small thing, so if you have one near your house, you could go there if you don’t want to mess around with the device yourself.

How to Connect an iPhone or iPad to a TV

You can easily connect any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a TV screen or even many projectors with the help of a wired connector adapter and HDMI cable. As long as the recipient TV, display, or projector has an HDMI input port, you can mirror the iPhone or iPad display directly to that screen. This is great for presentations, demonstrations, watching videos or movies, and so much more. The output video can be a maximum of 1080p HDTV resolution, and yes both video and audio are transmitted, mirrored from iOS to the TV screen.

If you don’t want to use HDMI, you can also use a wireless method with AirPlay as described here too.

Requirements for Connecting an iPhone or iPad to a TV / Projector with HDMI

• iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with a Lightning connector port
• TV, HDTV, or digital projector that has an HDMI input – this will be the target display for mirroring the iOS screen to
• HDMI cable – a reasonably long length is preferable for many situations
• Lightning Digital AV Adapter for iPhone & iPad

This is what the Lightning to HDMI cable looks like, it also has a lightning port on there if you wish to charge an iOS device or have it connected to a power source while in use.

Once you have all the hardware, the remaining setup is extremely easy to get the iPhone or iPad connected to a TV screen.

Connecting the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a TV, Display, Projector, with HDMI

1. Be sure the iOS device is powered on
2. Connect the Lightning Digital AV Adapter to the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
3. Connect the HDMI cable to the Lightning AV adapter then also connect the HDMI cable to the TV, display, or projector you wish to export the iOS screen to

     4. Toggle the settings on the TV or projector to the appropriate HDMI input, this differs between TV, 

         displays, and projectors, but typically it’s within the “Input” options on displays

    5. When the correct HDMI input is found, iOS will detect the secondary screen and immediately start 

         projecting the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch display mirrored on the TV

You can now use iOS as usual, with the screen mirrored to the other display or TV. Play a video, game, run through a presentation, show a demonstration, play a slideshow, share pictures on a larger screen, whatever you want to do on the iOS device is now in full screen on the TV.

Note if the device is oriented vertically, large black bars will appear on both sides of the mirrored iOS screen. Because of this, you’ll likely want to turn off orientation lock so that you can rotate the iPhone or iPad screen into horizontal position to better match the wider screen TV display. This is particularly important for watching movies and video from an iOS device connected to a TV:

It also helps with apps that support the horizontal / widescreen format too, like Safari.

Without rotating into horizontal mode, the picture will simply display on the TV or projector smaller than it would otherwise if widescreen is possible, like playing a movie.

So while using a wired connection and HDMI cable is less fancy than using wireless like AirPlay, there’s also much less troubleshooting required since you basically just connect the cables and you’re good to go. You can go about connecting a Mac to a TV in a similar cabled fashion, which is equally as useful, though doing that requires a different adapter than what is necessary for connecting an iOS device to a TV screen as we’ve covered here.

Of course, using a cabled solution may not be as fancy as mirroring a display wirelessly with AirPlay, but it works nearly flawlessly and there’s so little setup involved that it can be great solution for those who don’t mind the wired connection. 

How to Record 4K Video on iPhone 6S & iPhone 6s Plus

The new iPhone cameras are able to record ultra high resolution video at 4K resolution, though the high definition movie capturing ability is not enabled by default. Thus, in order to capture 4K high definition video with the iPhone you’ll need to enable the super HD recording feature first, which is done through the devices camera settings.

If you were wondering, the reason the iPhone 4K video recording feature is turned off by default is likely because of the significant storage requirements that are necessary to capture and record 4K video. Thus, the iPhone video capture default is set to 1080p at 30 FPS. More on the storage requirements in a moment, but first let’s show how to enable the 4K video recording for those who want to capture truly HD video with their devices camera.

How to Enable 4K Video Recording on iPhone

You’ll need a new iPhone with 4K video support to have this feature available, which is the 6S or better:

1. Open the Settings app and go to “Photos & Camera”
2. Scroll down to “Camera” and tap on “Record Video”
3. Select “4K at 30 fps” to enable 4K video recording with the iPhone camera
4. Exit out of Settings

Now that 4K video recording is enabled, you’re ready to go.

While you’re in these settings you may want to go about changing the slow motion recording speed as well.

Recording 4K Video with the iPhone Camera

Once 4K video capturing is enabled, any video recorded with the default iPhone Camera app will capture at the ultra high resolution 4K. This is indicated clearly when in the Camera app Video mode by the “4K” badge” in the corner of the screen both before recording and while capturing video.

Video captured in 4K is incredibly smooth and arrives at such a high resolution that most TV sets can’t even display the full quality.

As with other capture modes, you can continue to snap a still photos with the normal camera while recording 4K video.

So why not always use 4K video all the time? The settings app hints at this while you’re making the adjustment from SD to HD to 4K video.

• 60 MB with 720p video
• 130MB with 1080p HD video at 30 FPS (this is the default setting)
• 200MB with 1080p HD at 60 FPS
• 375 MB at 4K resolution

As you can see, the 4K video capture takes up nearly 3x the storage space as the default recording option, and a whopping six times the storage of the lower resolution 720p. This is important to keep in mind, recording 4K video resolution takes up a huge amount of storage space, so you’ll likely want to transfer the ultra high resolution videos onto a computer rather quickly instead of letting them linger on the iPhone and take up precious storage.

You’ll also want to be sure plenty of free space is available while recording the 4K video, otherwise you’ll quickly run out, which stops the video capture whether you’re ready to stop recording or not.

For those without the latest iPhone models (6S and 6S Plus), you can still make adjustments to the quality of video recorded on the device, primarily by setting the video to record at 60FPS while in 1080p, which is very smooth and looks great too. Given that most televisions and monitors are 1080p or less resolution, the video still looks phenomenal, but clearly the near future of video is at the 4k resolution.

Apple iPhone 6s vs DSLR camera: video comparison (4K vs 1080p)

Which one records better video: a DSLR or a smartphone?

Well, that's a dumb question, you'd say: a DSLR has got the much larger sensor which is a huge advantage in low light and it has interchangeable lenses. Plus, it depends on the DSLR, of course. And you'd be right in all those considerations, but let's make a quick reality check: we've got the iPhone 6s with its new 12-megapixel iSight camera that can now record 4K video, on one hand, and the Canon Rebel T4i (aka EOS 650D), an entry-level DSLR released in mid-2012 that shoots 1080p, on the other. 

We've chosen the Rebel T4i for a couple of reasons: it's a popular entry-level camera and a good representative of the DSLR class. It's what many people have bought to capture better looking photos and videos. So despite the difference in resolutions, we were curious to see what is the difference between the Canon DSLR and the Apple iPhone 6s.

Our setup on the DSLR included a Tamron 17-50 F2.8 VC lens (priced at around $600) and if you add the price of the body, you end up with a total cost of around $1,000. The iPhone 6s is definitely cheaper with its $650 full retail price. Keep in mind that we have recorded all footage using automatic settings on both devices.

So what are the results? Take a look at our iPhone 6s vs DSLR video comparison right below to find out.