The headphones included with the iPhone have some useful special features. With them, you can answer your phone, ignore a call sending it straight to voicemail, oh, and even listen to music.
The iPhone’s headphones have a small microphone/button bulge on the right ear side as seen above. You can use these headphones as headphones, of course, but you can also use them as a corded earpiece to talk on your iPhone because of the microphone.
When a call comes in, you can press the button/microphone combo once to answer the call or twice quickly to send the call to voicemail.
Perhaps the best use for me will be not having to look to see which earphone is right and which is left. Just feel for the microphone bulge and you know you’ve got the right side.