1031 – Photos, Calls & Cameras: Tom talks Phone Tips

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

• Episode intro: Tom returns after a short break and introduces the topic—useful phone tips, mainly focused on iPhones (Android usually has similar features).
• Duplicate photos cleanup:
o iPhone Photos app → Utilities → Duplicates → merge or delete extra photos.
o Helps free up storage, especially after burst-mode shots.
• Call forwarding:
o Check carrier instructions.
o iPhone path: Settings → Apps → Phone → Call Forwarding → enter number.
o Verizon shortcut: *72 + number (activate), *73 (deactivate).
o Other carriers may have similar codes—ask provider.
• Camera lenses & zoom:
o iPhones may have 2–3 physical lenses but Apple markets them as “seven lenses” due to digital combinations.
o Common zoom settings (approx.):
 0.5x (super wide, ~13mm)
 1x (~24mm, natural view)
 2x (~48mm)
 Up to 120mm on Pro models.
o Wider mm = zoom, smaller mm = wider angle.
o Best photo quality when using preset zoom levels (e.g., 1x, 2x, 3x). Custom zoom (e.g., 1.3x) reduces quality but fine for web use.
o Macro mode auto-activates for close-up shots (yellow flower icon).
• Camera default setup:
o In Settings → Camera (sometimes “Main” or “Fusion” camera), you can set the default lens/zoom when the camera opens.
• Resources & promotions:
o Free Automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree (v3.0).
o Training site: screwthecommute.com/training (search “phone” for ~20 other episodes with tips).
o Mentorship: GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com.
o Digital marketing school: IMTCVA.org (online, licensed, 6-month program).
👉 Main takeaway: Learn to clean up duplicate photos, set up call forwarding, and optimize use of iPhone camera lenses/zoom for better efficiency and photo quality.

===

Episode 1031 – Phone Tips
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 1031 of Screw the Commute podcast back after a brief hiatus, but had to get some work done. And so, uh, it's, uh, halfway done. I got two eyes. I was thinking about getting my third eye worked on too, but, uh, the doctor looked at me funny when I said that. Anyway, we're gonna do some phone tips, especially with some cool stuff about your camera app and your lenses and things like that. And, uh, anytime I do a phone tips you Android users, usually your phone will do something similar. It's just that I don't use Android, so I usually have to slant towards iPhone. And we have probably 20 episodes now because you're using your cell phone all the time, you might as well be lightning fast when you do it. So lots of tips on that. You can go to our training site. And just search for the word phone. Usually you can hit Ctrl F on a mac or PC or command F, and you'll find all our phone tip episodes. And if you just did a couple of them a week, at the end of a month, you would be so fast on your cell phone you'd, you know, make your head spin. All right. So let's see episode. Hope you didn't miss episode. Episode 1031 030. That was called stinky statistics. That's where you can't believe a lot of the things you hear. And I give you exact examples on why you can't believe certain things because of bias and straight out lying. All right, let's see. Pick up a copy of my automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Get version 3.0. In case you have 2.0, there's new stuff in version 3.0. Doesn't cost you anything. Check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com. And my school, the only licensed dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country. Probably the world. Certified to operate by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia because it's distance learning. You can do it concurrently with another school if you happen to be enrolled, but this one will give you a highly in-demand skill in as little as six months. And we've actually had people making money before they graduate. IMTCVA.org.

[00:02:48] All right. So let's get into some tips here. A lot of times you have duplicate photos on your phone. So I'm going to tell you how to get rid of those natively. In in the camera you don't have to get any extra apps. So you go to photos and then utilities and then duplicates and you might have to to. If you don't see that, you might have to customize your photo app a little bit, and there's plenty of YouTube videos on that. But then you just tap the extra ones and hit trash and they disappear, and it frees up a lot of space on your phone. So duplicate photos, and where that comes into play sometimes is when you accidentally hit the burst mode on your phone and get 40 different 40 photos instantly. You know, something like that. So.

[00:03:43] So there you go. All right. Next thing is forwarding calls. Now you have to check with your carrier on this because if this doesn't work then you ask them how to do it. And some of them do it with very simple commands. But I'll show you how to do it. You go to settings and then apps and then phone and then call forwarding. You toggle it on and then it says forward two and you put the phone number in there. So that's how you you do it directly. But Verizon has a star seven two command and then you hit star seven two plus the number that you want to forward to. And then when you want to end that you just hit star seven three. So it's pretty easy with Verizon. And your other carriers may have easy methods, but they're not well known. So you need to ask them about it. So that's call forwarding okay. The last topic today is lenses. You know, these fancy iPhones have three lenses on them. Well, Apple claims that they're actually seven lenses, but that's because the lenses are used for multiple things digitally. So if you open your phone app, you see some numbers across the bottom, like 0.5 and one and two and three and five, depending on which version of phone you have. Well, these are the level of zoom and they're measured in millimeters. So the smaller the millimeter, the wider the lens and the higher the millimeter, the more zoom it is. Now it's suggest suggested that if you want the highest quality picture, stick to the ones that are there on your screen.

[00:05:35] Don't go 1.2 or 1.7 x because you can do it and it's perfectly fine for whatever your purposes are. You have to decide you need super high quality or just okay quality. And usually on the web, okay quality is good enough because the monitors can only show so much. Now, how do they brag about seven lenses when there's only 3 or 2? If you have an older iPhone or one on a really old iPhone. So what they're doing is digitally using the lenses and combinations of lenses to to get these numbers. So the super wide angle is a 13 millimeter. And that's usually I think your 0.5 x on your screen one x is 24 millimeter. And these vary slightly by phone models too. So I'm not giving you the definitive I'm just saying one X is is kind of what your eye kind of sees. Then they go to 28 millimeter and then they go to 35 millimeter and 48 millimeter which is two x. And then the, you know, zoom is 77 millimeter. And some of the bigger, you know, the pro phones have 120 millimeter zoom. Now these are digital. And the more you zoom, the less quality you're going to have in the picture. And of course, harder it is to hold it steady to that. You got to consider that. And then they have a macro feature for super close up. And most of the lenses will automatically switch.

[00:07:15] I think you can turn that off if it bugs you, but for super close up, which usually couldn't do in the past, it was like 3ft or 3m or less. You couldn't focus. But now they have a macro feature, so it automatically turns on. On my phone, it turns into, I think, a yellow circle with a little flower in it. When the macro kicks in and like I said, some people like that, some people don't. And then if you do want to vary the amount of zoom, you hold your finger on any one of the numbers that are shown on your screen and then slide, there's like an arc comes up where you can slide it to 1.3 if that's the focus or the zoom that you want, or you can pull it back to 1.2 if that frames the thing better for you. Now you can also set the default when you open your camera app of where it's going to start, especially in the lower ranges. Now you can't start at 120 zoom. That would be kind of ridiculous. You couldn't even find your subject in most cases if you started out at 120. So you just go to your settings and then camera. And then in the older versions it would say main camera. The newer one that I have says Fusion Camera. I suspect that means they fuse the the view of all the lenses. I don't I don't really know the technical stuff behind it, but there you can set which lens, which millimeters you, whenever you open your camera app will be the default.

[00:08:54] And so you can play with that a little bit and just, you know, take a look at something under one setting and then look at it at another setting. Change the default and change it again. I think you have three choices of the default setting and see what you like best for the default. You can always change it once your camera app is open and you're trying to shoot something, but it's just opens at one that you're most comfortable with. So that's a little bit about the lenses on iPhone. So so hopefully that helped you out. And like I said go look at screwthecommute.com/training. And then control F or command F and search for the word phone and you'll see. I think at least 20 episodes each 2 or 3 tips that'll just drive you crazy on. Wow. I wish I'd have known that a long time ago. To save me a fortune in time. And my. My fingers all swollen up from tapping too many times like George Jetson. And you. Got to be old enough to remember what that means. So there you go. So check out my mentor program, greatinternetmarketingTraining.com and my school IMTCVA.org. And give me a call if you if you really want to save several hundred thousand bucks and get your child or yourself a great education in a very short period of time, then check it out. All right. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.