Just as snow-white could not go anywhere without the Seven Dwarves, in a similar way, Apple’s new iPhone is not the iPhone without its own seven dwarves -- or in our case widgets. Like dwarves, widgets are small but very helpful. Actually there are more than seven little widgets. Seven of the most widely-used widgets that the iPhone contains are weather reports, stock reports, sports results, flight tracking, local restaurant searches, a language translator, and stickies (an enduring favorite among Mac Fanatics).
What are widgets?
Widgets are mini-applications or software installed on your iPhone. They let you perform the most common and often executed tasks, while providing you with fast access to the information you require. Most of the time, widgets are configurable by the user, and then are stored to remember their configuration parameters the next time they are viewed.
The following is the list of the pre-installed iPhone widgets:
iTunes - Play, stop, pause, skip forward and backward through songs on your list. It’s a scaled down version of the popular iTunes media player.
Stocks – Monitor performance of your stocks, mutual funds, bonds and major indexes at home and abroad.
Weather – Obtain near-real time weather conditions around the world with details about current temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius as well as weekly forecasts for your area of interest.
Dictionary – A Webster style dictionary, where by typing part of a word, or an entire word, you can find definitions or find synonyms, antonyms, and more.
Phone Book – Search for phone numbers in your phone book or address book, as well as from publicly listed US-based companies and businesses. Make a call directly from this widget.
World Clock – While on the road, you can easily track local time or current time at your final destination. You can open up several world clocks in order to compare time in each city or point of interest.
Stickies – Simple reminders in a post-it like format. You can configure them with different colors and fonts.
Tile Game – One of several built-in games to kill time while on the road. This fun game allows you to scramble a picture of your choice, and put it back together.
Calculator – Perform basic calculations such as addition, subtraction, division and multiplication.
Translator – In addition to the iPhone’s language dictionary functions in a variety of languages, you can translate words from English to one of the following languages: Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Russian and vice versa.
Calendar – Access daily, weekly, monthly or yearly calendars. You can flip between days, weeks, months and years.
Flight Tracker – This widget is handy to anyone who travels a lot. Enter your flight details and get a list of available flights.
Address Book – locate your locally stored contacts by alphabet, or flip sequentially like any phone book.
Unit Converter – if you are in Europe or Asia – or any other region where they use military or scientific units of measurement instead of U.S. units -- this widget will come to your rescue. You can convert length, temperature, weight and others.