Five ninja tips for iOS 7

Apple's latest operating system, iOS 7 has been set loose and some huge changes have been made since iOS 6.

You may have been an early bird and updated already or maybe you are hanging back to see how others react to the new software.

We have pulled together five ninja tips to show you what your iPhone or iPad can do once you install iOS 7, but there are plenty more so get updating and get playing.

A separate inbox for unread mail and VIPs

There are a number of new tricks in the mail section but one of the most exciting we have found is the unread mail and adding someone to VIP.

There is little worse than scrolling through endless emails trying to fish out the ones you need to read just to get that number down, and now you don't have to.

If you go into Mail, click on Mailboxes and then edit and select the ones you want.

You can now nominate people you want to speak to - colleagues, friends - as VIPS, ensuring you see their mail, rather than promotional mails from carpet warehouses or your local pizza shop. It speeds up email on iPhone no end.

To do this, find an email from them, click on their name so their contact card comes up and press "Add to VIP".

Never miss a moment

It's always hard to capture the perfect picture, especially if a few people are involved. Someone might be blinking, or looking the wrong way.

The new Burst mode in the camera app allows you to take a burst of photos by holding your finger on the shutter or the volume button.

Once you've captured all the action, iOS 7 will try and choose your favourite one but you can select your own too.

If you go into Favourites, you'll see the one already selected for you with a grey circle underneath, but you can select your own in here too by tapping on it.

Easy way to get to the top

You might be a Twitter, a Facebook fan or just scrolling through the heap of messages you have. But if you find yourself scrolling for long periods of time, to then have to scroll all the way back up, there is a sneaky trick to help.

It was on previous versions of iOS but it is a handy tip to know if you aren't aware if it.

If you tap the clock at the top of your screen when you have had enough scrolling, it will take you all the way back to the top. You never know, it might save you a minute of two.

Save your battery

No one wants to run out of juice because you can guarantee you'll run out just when you need it.

There are a few tips in iOS 7 to save your battery life, but one of the ones we found that isn’t that obvious is turning off background app refresh.

Hop into Settings and you'll find the Background App Refresh pane. Turning it off will stop apps refreshing their content when you’re on Wi-Fi or a mobile network. It will also stop them using Location Services.

Find things quicker

Sometimes you need to find things quickly and routing around your contact database or inbox can be anything other than quick.

In previous iOS's you had to swipe to the left to search for content. However with iOS 7, all you have to do to find phone numbers, apps, texts, emails and more is swipe down anywhere on the home screen.

A Spotlight search box will appear and you can hunt for whatever you need. You can also restrict what it searches for by going to Settings, then General then Spotlight Search and tick the relevant boxes.

The new iOS 7 will work on any of the following devices: iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C, iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad 4 or iPad mini.

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