Apple’s new iPhone SE is a powerful smartphone with a small screen and an attractive price tag, taking a lot of features from existing Apple handsets, mainly iPhone 6S & 6S Plus. However, it lacks the highlighting feature of Apple’s current flagship smartphones: 3D Touch. 3D Touch lets iPhone 6S and 6S Plus users access certain functions of compatible apps right from the home screen, without ever opening an app. This is courtesy the pressure-sensitive display panel that can distinguish between light taps and long presses of the finger or the thumb. Want to post a Facebook status? Just long-press the Facebook icon and choose the option to write a post. Want to upload a photo on Instagram? Long press the Instagram icon and select new post. It even lets you preview images and emails. And developers are taking notice too, with popular apps like WhatsApp joining the fold. But you can’t do any of that with iPhone SE as the feature, as speculated, remains exclusive to iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. Nevertheless, 3D Touch is a feature that can change how people use apps on smartphones, provided there is enough developer support. Even makers of Android devices have started to integrate 3D Touch-like pressure sensitive display in their smartphones, even though such models are few and there is no developer support in the ecosystem yet either. However, things may change if Google also makes a 3D Touch-like function a standard part of Android, as is being rumoured nowadays. If this happens, even Android devices of next year (at the top models) may have such functionality baked into their devices.
