Email and Messaging

The VIP list in iOS Mail makes it possible to see only messages from important senders all in one place. So how can you add or remove VIP status to specific email addresses or people?

To add one of your contacts to VIP:
1. Navigate to Mail -> Mailboxes
2. Select the blue circle next to VIP
3. Select Add VIP... at the bottom of the screen
4. Choose the contact to add to VIP

To add an email sender to VIP:
1. Open a message from the sender
2. Select the sender's info in the email header
3. Select Add to VIP

To remove a VIP:
1. Navigate to Mail -> Mailboxes

Sometimes when you start a new email message, iOS suggests an email address that's no longer being used, and has already been removed from your Contacts. How can you tell your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to stop using that address when you enter a contact's name? Here are instructions on how to remove this old email address from the list.

First open the Mail app and start a new message. Start to enter the name of the contact. You will see a list of suggestions from contacts and the recently used email addresses.

Imo.im announced today it will begin offering free voice calling for iOS users via its imo instant messenger app. The free service allows users running iOS version 3.1 to make voice calls through Wi-Fi and 3G connections. According to imo, "free voice calling eliminates the cost of mobile minutes without any loss in the quality of the connection and, when connected to Wi-Fi, requires no data usage."

The instant messaging client connects users to 11 of the top third-party messaging services. It supports Facebook Chat, Google Talk, Skype, MSN, ICQ/AIM, Yahoo, Jabber, Hyves, VKontakte, Myspace and Steam. The app features group messaging, photo sharing, concurrent sessions on different devices, searchable chat history and provides the ability to share multimedia files with other users.

You may have tried to send more than one picture to your friends via the Messages app on iOS. Currently there's no way to add more photos when sending an MMS, that is unless you open the Photos app and do it from there.

The process is simple, just open Photos and go to the Album or Camera Roll to choose the pictures you want to text. Tap the arrow button in the upper right hand corner. Tap the photos you wish to send via MMS, and a red check mark will appear over the photos selected.

What's great about Twitter and several other apps on the iPhone is that you can simply pull down to refresh information. Jailbreakers may already know this is the preferred way to refresh with IntelliScreenX, for example. Apple has seen the light and will be adding this functionality to the Mail app in iOS 6.

If your device is already jailbroken with Absinthe, you can add pull to refresh to your Mail app right now for free. The name of the tweak is Pull To Refresh for Mail and it comes to us from developer xh and the BigBoss repo on Cydia.

The email client known as Sparrow has finally made its way to the App Store. The new app is $2.99 and features full IMAP support (Gmail, Google Apps, iCloud, Yahoo, AOL, Mobile Me and custom IMAP accounts). The app does not support POP accounts, push notifications and does not integrate with iCloud. Most of these features will be added in future updates.

Check out a full list of features below.

Verizon Wireless makes it possible to block incoming text (SMS) messages on your iPhone. After logging into My Verizon follow these steps to block texts:

1. Navigate to My Services and select Verizon Safeguards.
2. Click Spam Controls and then choose Internet Spam Blocking.
3. Enter the phone number, email or domain the spam messages came from.
4. Click Save.

That's it! Verizon will block the sender of the spam text messages from sending any more texts to your device.

To report a spam SMS message received on your iPhone, you can forward the text to the number SPAM (7726). AT&T will reply with a text asking for the phone number of the person who sent the spam text message.

Reply with the phone number and that's it. Text messages reported as spam and the replies from AT&T are not counted towards your data plan or monthly text allowance.

If you travel in and out of spotty service areas, or have many devices on the same WiFi network trying to grab email from a server with IMAP or POP connection limits, you might be one of the lucky folks who gets inundated with popup "Cannot Get Mail" errors every time you open Mail on your iPhone. If you've got multiple email accounts setup on your iPhone, these frequent popup warnings can become extremely frustrating.

Need to block a specific phone number from calling or texting your iPhone? It could be telemarketers, spam text messages, or that crank that won't stop calling and messaging. Apple's iOS does not have a built-in feature to block a phone number, but there are other solutions.