Haptic Touch, the lifesaver of the iPhone XR to make up for the lack of 3D Touch

El iPhone XR it's selling pretty well, or so the latest reports and analyst data say. This product presented in the keynote in September, meant a great step for Apple: it presented an iPhone with the same technology as the iPhone XS, but with subtle differences such as the OLED screen or the finish.

Another difference was that in the XR there was no 3D Touch tool, that allowed us to perform different actions throughout the system depending on the pressure we made on the screen itself. To fill this gap, Apple is testing a feature called HapticTouch, the 3D Touch replacement that will likely see light in the final version of iOS 12.1.1.

IPhone XR welcomes Haptic Touch

The iPhone XR screen features shortcomings compared to the iPhone XS. Present a screen that has been called fluid retina, "The most advanced LCD panel on the market". The presence of this screen has prevented it from losing functions such as 3DTouch.

Thanks to state-of-the-art engineering, the iPhone X screenR extends to the edges. The result is a full-screen design, the largest LCD an iPhone has ever had, and a size that still fits perfectly in your hand.

3D Touch was a tool that Apple introduced with the iPhone 6s that allowed users to perform three actions depending on how much they pressed on the screen:

• Quick actions: if we click on an icon of an app we access quick aspects created by the developer himself
• Peek and Pop: If we click on a notification, it is displayed and offers us its content without accessing the application itself, the same if we click on a web address, a street in Maps ... endless possibilities
• Rest of functions: We can also draw in the Notes app. If we press harder, the stroke will be stronger, etc.

Without a sensitive screen, 3D Touch disappeared on the iPhone XR, what made Apple think about how to offer the same advantages in a different way. And it seems they have found it. The feature is released in the iOS 12.1.1 beta for developers. Is about Haptic touch. The pressure that we exerted with 3D Touch is changed by holding down the screen for a certain time. It seems to work fine, but we'll see how users adapt to this new feature.

Apple's mechanics have been good: giving a different name to a function that they believe differently, but, after all, Haptic Touch aims to offer information and quick access to applications and specific actions with just pressing (not pressing). We will see how this function is finally received in the final version of iOS 12.1.1.