Apple getting touchy with 3D Touch Display for iPhone 6s

7 Sep 2015

With just a matter of days until Apple is expected to reveal its next handsets, the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, it has been revealed that their screens will come with 3D Touch Display, an updated version of Force Touch.

The Force Touch display that Apple released with the most recent generation of Macbooks allowed for a series of gestures and pressure-level touch controls to reduce the number of steps required to carry out tasks. The 3D Touch Display will be rather similar.

According to 9to5Mac, the iPhone 6s’s 3D Touch Display will be an upgrade on the previous model with, unsurprisingly, a three-stage approach.

What this means is that, rather than having a tap and press system, 3D Touch Display will add a double-press interaction.

This will add a number of new shortcut gestures for the phones, given that the display will now be able to sense three different dimensions of pressure.

While it should add some new tricks for the user – making interactions with mapping software and images that little bit faster – the gaming industry will no doubt be keen to get access to its functionality as a means of creating new games based on a three-dimensional gesture setup.

It goes without saying that Apple’s own apps, like Music, will become heavily integrated with 3D Touch Display for tasks such as adding a song to a playlist by doing a long press, or tapping once for offline listening.

Given the deluge of information that has already been released on what is expected to be in the iPhone 6s, including its improved camera and animated wallpaper, the reveal could be nothing more than a formality, but demand is still expected to be high for the iPhone 7 stop-gap.

Child with iPad image via Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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