You don’t need a pressure-sensitive display or fancy sensors to take advantage of the 3D Touch features on the iPhone 6s. Engineers at the University of Michigan have developed a way to bring 3D Touch to any smartphone using incredibly clever software.
Pressure-sensitive displays haven’t really taken off like many of us (including me) thought they would. I’m a huge fan of 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s, and I didn’t think it would take long for the likes of Samsung to copy it. But very few are showing an interest.
That could be because pressure-sensitive displays aren’t easy to build. Apple says it took years to perfect the 3D Touch display, and that engineering the hardware behind it is incredibly difficult. That’s probably why it’s yet to make its way to the iPad.
It may also be one of the reasons why Apple’s rivals aren’t scrambling to copy 3D Touch, but thanks to some clever software, special hardware may not be necessary.
ForcePhone, a technology developed by the University of Michigan, can allow any smartphone to detect pressure applied to its display, and even to its sides. It does this by using the built-in microphone and speaker in exciting new ways.
ForcePhone can be installed on any smartphone, according to its creators, and a demo version will be available in June. It will likely be need to baked into an operating system to provide the same features 3D Touch does on iPhone, but it will be interesting to see where this goes.
Here’s to hoping ForcePhone can bring 3D Touch capabilities to many more devices. I want it on my Android already!
Killian Bell is a freelance writer based in the U.K. He has an interest in all things tech and also covers Android over at CultofAndroid.com. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell.
7 responses to “New software brings iPhone’s 3D Touch to any smartphone”
So the long press became 3d touch. We have always had such a gimmick in thr long press. No reason apple couldn not have inocated thenlong press to do the samr thing as 3d touch. Long press tombring up options, with one of them being able to arrange icons.
Long press is old technology. It’s also very slow compared to Apple’s 3D touch.
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What this technology does is send out a high frequency through the speakers that it measures and adjust to.. I don’t think this is going to work while you’re listen to music or watching a video, nor will it work while using headphones/earbuds. Right? If so, then this is a technology that’s great for a show off demo, but not practical, hence not a big deal.
Could software not just sense how much pressure is being applied by detecting the width of your fingertip on a normal press and using that as the baseline. Let’s say the touchscreen reports it back as 0.5cm radius. Then subsequent presses that are harder would be able to be detected because the spread of the fingertip would increase to say 0.7cm radius. Likewise , lighter touches would be smaller?
Or are these multitouch screens using fixed point sizes ?
I made a tweak a few months back that would mimic 3D touch on any jailbroken iOS device, but mine didn’t use the speakers or microphone, like wtf thats the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard hahahahaha. My tweak was looking for how much surface area your finger was touching on certain applications. so by pressing your finger hard on the display, obviously with our fingers being made of skin, that skin begins to squish and spread on the screen. Boom. Fake 3D touch. But my fake 3D touch wasn’t stupid as hell like this android feature hahaha.
Well you’ve answered my question above emphatically ;)