Before Update: When your screen is locked and you receive notifications of messages, the sender’s first and last name appeared in the notification.

After Update: The update default displays only the first name of the person sending the message. Well that’s just swell if you only have one “John” or “Mary” in your contact list. But if you have several people with the same first name, it’s confusing.

To change this back to the way it used to be, go to Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Scroll down to Contacts and choose Short Name. Tap it to turn it off. Or, if you prefer one of the other choices listed, just click that instead.

When you check your email, then play a quick game, and stop to read a text, unless you close those apps, they stay open and running in the background. This can drain your battery quickly. To close open apps…

Before Update: To close apps, you could double click on the Home key, and your open app icons would be displayed.in a tidy little row. You’d hold your finger on one until they started to wiggle, then press the “x” on each one to close it out.

After Update: To close open apps, double click on the Home key. Instead of icons, you’ll see screen shots of the apps with their icon below. To close them, hold your finger on the screenshot and swipe up. Same theory, different process. Just work your way through them until they’re all closed.

Before Update: When you received a text message, the time the text was sent to you appeared with each text.

After Update: Apparently the powers that be didn’t consider this important, so it’s been hidden, but…you can still find it. Hold your finger on any text message text bubble and drag to the left. The time sent will be displayed to the right of each message, but it goes away again as soon as you take your finger off the message. (I’m still not sure I’m a fan of this one).

After Update: Did you screw up and give your phone number to someone you shouldn’t have? You can now block all their attempts to contact you. This will block their phone calls, text messages, and Face Time attempts.

Here’s how:

1. Add their number to your Contacts (finding their number shouldn’t be a problem – it will be listed 95 times in your Recent Calls list. Go to Phone>Recents. Click on the circle with an “i” to get their number).
2. After you’ve entered their number in Contacts, scroll down to the bottom of the screen and tap on Block This Caller.

After Update: Are you taking a picture of someone in motion? The update includes a redesign of the camera app that allows you to take multiple shots in quick succession.

Here’s how: Instead of pressing the home key to take your shot, press and hold the Volume Up button. Try it. Cool, huh?

After Update: The update added quite a few new sounds to the sound library to choose from to set your new message notifications. Of course, I had to go and listen to all of them, and ended up reassigning all the sound alerts for new email, new text message, new voicemail, and my default ringtone. It’s fun, but I do this so often, I can’t ever remember what sound I’ve assigned to which alert.

Here’s how: Go to Settings>Sounds>Sound & Vibration Patterns. Go down each alert on the list and assign a sound to it. If one becomes annoying, you can go back and change these whenever you want.

After Update: Are you multi-tasking and don’t have time to catch up reading your emails? Siri’s just sittin’ there doing nothing. Get her to read them to you.

Here’s how:Hold down on the Home button to wake up Siri. Tell her “Read my emails“. She’ll tell you how many you have, then read you the name of the sender, time and date sent and the subject of each. When I tried this, I had 25 emails. She read me three and asked if I wanted her to read them all. I said “no”. I thought this was a great feature, but I wanted to have the content of the emails read to me, so I asked her. Geez Louise she’s an accomodating woman! I told her “Read me the content of the email received at 11:15am.” She frickin did it!  Unfortunately, she also dutifully read the entire company’s disclaimer and copyright statement that was included at the end of the email, but hey, she’s just doing her job.