Is Apple bringing back 3D Touch?

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Do you remember the drama that surrounded the removal of 3D Touch and the arrival of Haptic Touch with the iPhone 11 series? We certainly do. Well, good news could be ahead of us — a new patent has been published by the U.S. Patent Office with the title “3D Touch.”

3D Touch was first introduced in September of 2014 and was an instant hit in many people's eyes — with the likes of popular tech YouTuber MKBHD Tweeting this when the feature was taken away from us:

I miss 3D touch

— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) May 1, 2020

For those of you that don’t remember 3D Touch, let me reintroduce you. It added an extra level of interaction on the iPhone by adding extra pressure-sensitivity to the iPhone screen. Press on a link harder than you normally would, and you saw a small preview of the site. Press even harder, and the link would ‘pop’ to fill the full screen. This feature was called Peek and Pop. 3D Touch was also used to quickly access shortcuts within apps. Within the patent, Apple describes why it was taken away and why it could possibly make a much awaited return:

Components for detecting the amount of force exerted on an interface surface of a touch sensitive component can utilise complex and expensive sensor arrays to extend this desired functionality to the entire surface. These expensive arrays can also occupy a large spatial volume inside the electronic device, thereby potentially increasing the size of the device or reducing the space available for components that may provide additional desired functionalities.

So it looks like Apple has overcome previous problems with 3D Touch by adding something called a ‘pressure decay sensor’, a less expensive and much more agile component.

In some examples, detecting the amount of force applied to an interface surface can be achieved with a pressure decay sensor disposed in the internal volume. This pressure decay sensor can be relatively small and inexpensive, and can be disposed at almost any desired location in the internal volume. — PatentlyApple

Although this doesn’t directly point towards Apple adding 3D Touch again in the very next iPhone, it is certainly a possibility.

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Published to Apple Scoop on 16th March, 2021.