iPhone screen capture

I haven’t blogged much about my iPhone. (OK, lately I haven’t blogged much about anything…) But the latest firmware release (2.0) to my iPhone provides me an amazingly slick and valuable tool — screen capture of the iPhone’s display.

First of all, doing it is amazingly simple. You hold down the home button for a second and then press the off/lock button (on the top right of the iPhone). The picture of the display is saved in the photos. From there you can do whatever you can already do with pictures on the iPhone, such as email them.

So why would I use this? I can imagine a number of situations. An obvious one is simply any situation in which you’d like to show someone how cool your iPhone looks when it does whatever. Very useful for bloggers, educators and obnoxious Apple aficionados of every ilk.

Another involves the really helpful utilities on the iPhone, like the built-in Google maps feature. Imagine you are on the road while your friend is trying to figure out how to get to your lunch meeting location (in this case Nicolitalia Pizzeria in Provo, Utah — possibly the best authentic Italian pizza place in the valley). Imagine further that your friend is not cool enough to have an iPhone with the built-in Google maps feature. You go to Google maps on your iPhone, type in the search string “Nicolitalia pizzeria, provo, utah,” find a map of the place. You find that the built-in Google maps pin places Nick’s in the middle of University Parkway. No problem, you drop a second pin yourself and drag it right into the parking lot in front of the destination. You now snap a picture, and email it to him from your phone. Your friend is momentarily enlightened. Lunch goes off without a hitch. He will be more consistently enlightened when he springs for his own iPhone and when he becomes a regular at Nick’s.

The attached photo is my live demo of how this actually works. Yes, I did in fact email this to myself from my iPhone. Yes, that is in fact Nicolitalia Pizzeria. Yes, they do in fact have the best authentic Italian thin crust pizza in the valley. And now you have a map to get there…

If you see me there, say “Hi.” πŸ™‚

Nicolitalia Pizzeria

4 thoughts on “iPhone screen capture

  1. Very cool, I heard about this feature, but you present a great useful scenario, something we “obnoxious Apple aficionados” sometimes ignore. πŸ™‚ Also, I feel validated that you like Nicolitalia’s, since Shayla and I randomly found it 2 years ago and thought it was good, but never having been to Italy, I couldn’t vouch for its authenticity.

  2. Wait a minute… unfortunately, Chuck, you also just exposed one of the weaknesses of the Iphone. No MMS.

    When I first read this, I thought it was a great idea for sending directions of a place to a buddy with a cellphone without web capabilities. But then I remembered that the iphone has no MMS. This is a huge flaw because way more phones can receive an image than have email access, and most of the phones with email access also have web access (in other words, they could do their own google maping).

    So, I actually think I find this example of iphone coolness just devolved into another frustration of mine with the iphone.

  3. Now all I need to do is find the money for an iPhone and the monthly service charges! Hopefully it’ll happen sometime in the next decade. On the bright side, I will hopefully be heading to Provo this next school year to do recruiting for Walmart. That means I’ll be able to try Nicolitalia’s!

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