It’s Official: Apple Has Killed Off 3D Touch From Its iPhones

Several years ago when Apple launched the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, they introduced a new hardware feature in the form of 3D Touch which brought pressure-sensitive displays to smartphones. It sounded promising in theory, but it was quickly shown that it was more exciting in theory than in practice.

So much so that we have heard rumors that Apple could be killing off the feature in its 2019 iPhones. It turns out the rumors were true because while Apple did not mention anything about 3D Touch at its iPhone event, a quick look at the specs of the new iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max smartphones, 3D Touch seems to be gone.

Instead, Apple lists all the phones as sporting Haptic Touch. For those unfamiliar, Haptic Touch is Apple’s new approach to 3D Touch. The feature was originally introduced to the iPhone XR back in 2018 while the iPhone XS and XS Max continue to use 3D Touch. For the most part, both features are similar where they will provide haptic feedback to users, with the main difference being that 3D Touch will recognize varying levels of pressure while Haptic Touch pretty much only supports the long press.

It’s not surprising that the feature has been killed off. This is because while it was an interesting feature, the fact that users weren’t aware of which apps did or did not support 3D Touch was confusing and inconsistent, resulting in users just flat out ignoring it entirely.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Cellphones
Tags: 3d touch, iPhone, iphone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 11 Pro Max