How do I deactivate the following?

SomeDude · Dec 3, 2014

Greetings All,

My 5 crashed yesterday and they did a "firmware update" at the iStore - whatever that means, anyway, since everything is now turned on, I have to go about deactivating a whole host of things in order to save battery life. One of the things that gets my blood pressure boiling are those stupid circles with the initials in them that appear in the background of the screen when you are transitioning, you know, the things with the initials of people you've recently called, or texted.
Could someone please tell me how in the hell you get rid of them!!!! Those things IMHO, are one of those gimmicks that Apple puts in their iOS upgrades that serve no useful purpose other than taking up more data space!! Thanks.

scifan57 · Dec 3, 2014

SomeDude said:
Greetings All,

My 5 crashed yesterday and they did a "firmware update" at the iStore - whatever that means, anyway, since everything is now turned on, I have to go about deactivating a whole host of things in order to save battery life. One of the things that gets my blood pressure boiling are those stupid circles with the initials in them that appear in the background of the screen when you are transitioning, you know, the things with the initials of people you've recently called, or texted.
Could someone please tell me how in the hell you get rid of them!!!! Those things IMHO, are one of those gimmicks that Apple puts in their iOS upgrades that serve no useful purpose other than taking up more data space!! Thanks.

Go to settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars>Contacts>Show In App Switcher and slide the two switches to the left.

SomeDude · Dec 3, 2014

Wow! Thank you my good man, I would have never thought of looking for it there. If you don't mind I have another question I'd like to run past you; I have a few really cool pics I'd like to use as wallpapers, but when I post them as such it only shows a small portion of the pic and cropping the pic doesn't help either. Any ideas? Merry Christmas BTW.

scifan57 · Dec 3, 2014

SomeDude said:
Wow! Thank you my good man, I would have never thought of looking for it there. If you don't mind I have another question I'd like to run past you; I have a few really cool pics I'd like to use as wallpapers, but when I post them as such it only shows a small portion of the pic and cropping the pic doesn't help either. Any ideas? Merry Christmas BTW.

Back in iOS 7 there was a bug that caused photos used as wallpaper to be zoomed in but it was fixed in iOS 8. When I use one of my photos as wallpaper it's used exactly as it appears in my camera roll. I've no idea what's causing your wallpaper issue. If I find out I'll post the answer here.

This app was designed to fix the wallpaper problem in iOS 7, maybe you could try it. It's free in the App Store.

Wallpaper Fix Lite for iOS 8 7 - Rotate Position Scale Zoom Rearrange Wallpapers and Backgrounds on the App Store on iTunes

bear7962 · Dec 4, 2014

This is going to sound silly but are you clicking on the photo in your camera roll or photo stream and then clicking on use as wall paper? I used to do something more convoluted until I found out that they had made it simple and it sizes so much better now.

scifan57 · Dec 4, 2014

bear7962 said:
This is going to sound silly but are you clicking on the photo in your camera roll or photo stream and then clicking on use as wall paper? I used to do something more convoluted until I found out that they had made it simple and it sizes so much better now.

I don't know how the OP was doing it but I've alwsys tapped on Camera Roll when selecting one of my photos as wallpaper. I've never had any problems since iOS 8 was released.

bear7962 · Dec 4, 2014

Well, you do it the way Apple intended but I remember at first I went thru a whole rigmarole doing it the hard way, not surprising for me, lol.

SomeDude · Dec 4, 2014

bear7962 said:
Well, you do it the way Apple intended but I remember at first I went thru a whole rigmarole doing it the hard way, not surprising for me, lol.

I did the following: Settings-Wallpaper-Select New Wallpaper

SomeDude · Dec 4, 2014

I hate to throw another idea out there, but then again I did start this thread so ok, I have a wallpaper on my PC that I want on my phone, only I have NO idea how to get it on the phone. I looked in iTunes, but I cannot seem to find an option that will allow me to import only that pic. I mentioned this to my brother who also has an iPhone and he told me that there is an iTunes "Alternative" program out there, but that he couldn't remember the name of it. I have iPhonefunbox and have successfully transferred stuff from the phone to the PC, but it wouldn't let me transfer the pic out to the phone. What am I doing wrong?

bear7962 · Dec 4, 2014

Email the picture to yourself. Then open up the email on your phone. Click on the picture there.

scifan57 · Dec 4, 2014

bear7962 said:
Email the picture to yourself. Then open up the email on your phone. Click on the picture there.

That's what I've done, several times.

SomeDude · Dec 4, 2014

Ahhhh, ok, thank you!

SomeDude · Dec 8, 2014

I tried that app you spoke of for the wallpaper and it worked, but it shrinks the pic down so it fits in the screen and as a result, it ends up looking more like a thumbnail. On my 5 before I updated to iOS 8, the pic pretty much fit the screen without me doing anything to it, but it won't now, so what happened?

scifan57 · Dec 8, 2014

SomeDude said:
I tried that app you spoke of for the wallpaper and it worked, but it shrinks the pic down so it fits in the screen and as a result, it ends up looking more like a thumbnail. On my 5 before I updated to iOS 8, the pic pretty much fit the screen without me doing anything to it, but it won't now, so what happened?

If the app made the wallpaper picture fit the screen, what's wrong with it? Did it shrink the picture too much so that there's a border around the picture?
No one else has reported wallpaper problems with iOS 8. There was a zooming bug that affected wallpaper in iOS 7, but that was fixed with the introduction of iOS 8.