iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

After awhile, the Apple lightning cable is bound to fray. Finding the best durable lightning cable for charging your iPhone is a must. Apple switched to lightning cables with the iPhone 5, which means iPhone 6 and iPhone 7 users will be searching for a strong lightning charging cable too. You can get another one from Apple or put that money towards a third-party lightning cable that will be more likely to last a lot longer. We’ll cover the best, most durable lightning cables, the best short lightning cable, and multiple other categories. If you need a new charging cable, this is the roundup for you.

With the elimination of the headphone jack, Apple has effectively thrown its full weight behind Bluetooth technology. After years of being considered a faulty and glitchy transfer medium, Bluetooth has finally come into its own after years of refinement and technological advancement. The quality of playback that a Bluetooth speaker can pump out can easily be CD quality, depending of course on the source. Certainly it's been consistent and of a high enough caliber to fool die-hard audiophiles in blind acoustic tests. The following speakers are all top of the line Bluetooth speakers, each with its own merits and unique characteristics.

As 3D Touch becomes an older feature, more and more developers are adding 3D Touch options to their apps. Apple now has 3D Touch Quick Action options for nearly every stock app it makes. Netflix made sure it didn't lag far behind. Like other apps, when you activate 3D Touch by hard pressing the icon, a menu of different Quick Action options "pop" out. For Netflix, you’re able to select Search, My List, Trending Now, Continue Watching, or Share Netflix. This allows you to immediately continue watching the show on Netflix you were previously watching. Here’s how to use 3D Touch to continue watching Netflix.

iOS 10 on iPhone added a fresh Widgets screen, available with a right swipe from Lock Screen or Home Screen. On this Widgets screen, you can choose what information is displayed. If you allow Maps Nearby to be active, you can easily search for nearby locations with Lunch, Coffee, Shopping, Gas, and more. Searching for nearby maps locations from the Widgets screen in iOS 10 jumps right to the information you need once you’ve unlocked your iPhone. Here’s how to search nearby locations from Widgets screen in iOS 10.

With iOS 10, press Home to open means you have to click the Home button to actually navigate to your Home screen. You’ll see at the top of Lock screen, when you use Touch ID, it will say Unlocked but it won’t open to Home until you press your Home button. And if you have Raise to Wake disabled, unlocking your iPhone takes two presses of the Home button. Press Home to open can be disabled in Settings by turning on Rest Finger to Open. Here’s how to disable press Home to open with iOS 10 on iPhone.

You can send and receive audio messages to and from other iPhone users. So if you'd like to send a clip of a concert or lecture you're attending, you can just use this Messages feature instead of killing your iPhone battery creating a video or audio recording. You can also turn on a feature that allows you to listen to those messages by simply raising your iPhone to your ear. This feature is called Raise to Listen. It can also be used when checking voicemails. Here’s how to use Raise to Listen or reply to audio text in Messages.

Finally, iOS 10 has options for people who are multilingual. Previously, your iPhone had a singular language, which meant Autocorrect would try to change French words to English, even if you were using the French keyboard. But with iOS 10 on iPhone, your Autocorrect can be multilingual and solve this frustrating problem for those who know multiple languages or are learning them. With iOS 10, you can type text in multiple languages (regardless of what keyboard you’re using) and Autocorrect will make suggestions for the multiple languages. Here’s how to have multilingual Autocorrect on iPhone with iOS 10.