Earlier last month, we saw how Apple, with much fanfare, made official the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus, and both of these high end smartphones came with 3D Touch capability. This feature is also known as Force Touch in Apple’s MacBook family, where it basically enables different pressure levels that is applied to a touchscreen or trackpad to correspond with varying results in terms of the software running. It looks like Samsung does not want to be left out of the picture, with word that a 3D Touch “clone” could appear on the Galaxy S7.
Well, a patent application that has gone public thanks to the Korean Intellectual Property Office shows that Samsung has toyed with this idea since April – last year. At least, that was when the filing was registered, where it described a method to see varying software outcomes which will greatly depend on how much pressure a user decides to apply on the screen.
This pressure sensing will not use some sort of barometer to get a measure of it, but rather, making use of corresponding voltage to get the job done. It remains to be seen whether this will make it to future Samsung devices, but at least we do know that they are in the right direction if the need ever arises. [PDF File]