3D Touch was a marvelous feature introduced with the iPhone 6s but was taken away abruptly.
3D Touch was Revolutionary, and was Disabled from iPhones on a Hardware Level Using the iOS 13
Apple has done a lot of beautiful things with hardware, but for me, 3D Touch sits right at the top.
Introduced with the iPhone 6s as a way to interact with iOS, you would deep press on the display to get a glance of message threads, preview images and so much more.
To put it in simple words, the iPhone display was now pressure-sensitive.
In fact, it was so good and so advanced, the competition never got around to make something like that on a large scale. Apple really nailed it.
With the release of the iPhone 11 lineup, Apple removed the 3D Touch hardware from iPhone completely. The replacement? Haptic Touch, which is a fancier name for touch-and-hold.
Those with an older iPhone would keep on enjoying 3D Touch as long as they were holding on to their device.
However, with the release of iOS 13, Apple did the unthinkable and actually disabled the 3D Touch hardware in favor of Haptic Touch.
That’s right, Apple disabled 3D Touch at a hardware level. Even if you own the iPhone XS right now, the hardware is still there, but 3D Touch is disabled via software.
But wait, 3D Touch, or Force Touch, on Apple Watch was taken away using the same method as well. This happened when watchOS 7 was released.
You can still experience ‘3D Touch’ on your iPhone, or what’s left of it with Haptic Touch. Just open up an app like Instagram and press and hold on an image or video in the Explore tab.
Or, you can just launch the Messages app, press and hold on a thread to get a glimpse of it.
But, it doesn’t feel the same as pressing into the display with force.
Do I wish the feature made a return? Not really. Sometimes you have to leave things in the past to make room for better things. For example, the Home button.
