Apple's iPhone isn't a difficult device to use, but there are lots of treats hiding under its hood. So many, in fact, that without a little help you'll likely miss some especially useful feature that's going to make your life so much easier. That's exactly what Scott Kelby and Terry White are hoping to help you find with The iPhone Book.

Don't think of The iPhone Book as another manual. Instead, think of it as all of the cool iPhone tips you wish you could remember. Each page covers a single tip or iPhone feature, which is something I appreciated right away. You can read the book manual-style, or randomly flip to a page. Either way, there's a good chance you'll find something new to try out.

The book is divided up in logical chapters just as you would expect: getting started, using the phone features, using the iPod features, working with email, and so on. That goes a long way towards helping new iPhone users work through the device features, but it doesn't dilute the value of the one tip per page design. Instead, it breaks topics down into approachable bits of information.

The organizational style also lends itself well to figuring out a problem when you have a WTF moment. Here's my example:

A friend sent me a picture from their phone as a text message, or MMS (multimedia message), but I didn't get the picture. Instead, I received a text message telling me to visit viewmymessage.com and enter a cryptic message ID and password. Truly a WTF moment.

Page 97 held the answer I needed: For all of the iPhone's features, it doesn't yet support MMS. Instead, AT&T sends you a text message with the info you need so you can go online and see the picture your friend sent. Mystery solved.

Guys: Thanks for including page 97. Apple: Fix the MMS thing.

Considering all of the great tips in the book, I had to remind myself that this isn't really a tip book. The subtitle, after all, is How to do the things you want to do with your iPhone, not Scott and Terry's rockin' iPhone tip-a-palloza. As such, you'll get a mix of Scott-and-Terry tips along with some features that are available in Apple's PDF manual -- but with a Scott-and-Terry flair.

The downside is that some of the book's information may be a bit hard for some tech-ignorant users to find. Connecting to a hidden wireless network, for example, is covered (it's on page 195, if you are looking), but could be difficult for an inexperienced iPhone user to locate because there isn't an index entry for the topic. Of course, there's no way to anticipate every possible way someone might sift through an index hunting for information.

The Bottom Line
Reading The iPhone Book feels like sitting down with a couple of iPhone-savvy friends. Scott and Terry tell you how to do the things you want to do, just like the title says, and they do it without talking over your head. It's an easy read for iPhone newbies, and it may even hold a tip or two for experienced users, too.