When mobile apps and their development advance, many start seeing their limits. If compared to traditional PCs, mobile devices that are mostly made up of touch-enabled screens, have limited amount of input. To enhance these touch-enabled devices, tech companies have previously introduced some ways to add interaction possibilities, including multi-touch, voice and gesture. Although they're still under heavy development, people are seeing their limits already.
What comes next is pressure-sensitive sensors. These sensors are packed in a layer, and can be inserted within touch-enabled devices. What it does, is to create a new way of input, or to be exact, enhance input to a whole new level.
Apple was the one who popularized the technology. The company popular for its iPhone and "i"-related products, first introduced the feature on September 9th, 2014 during the Apple Watch conference. Called "Force Touch", the feature is essentially a pressure sensitive multi-touch technology that enables trackpads and touchscreens to distinguish between different levels of force being applied to their surfaces.
The technology was initially designed to add another method of input to Apple's devices. Starting with the Apple Watch, the company continued in bringing the technology to other product lineups which include the iPhone, MacBook, MacBook Pro, and Magic Trackpad.
When considering Force Touch, or 3D Touch as Apple rebrands it, the technology isn't practically new. Apple is not the first tech companies to implement such capability. BlackBerry for example, has patented such feature back in 2007. Apple's closest competitor Android has also been supporting Force Touch for years; Android 1.0 API Level 1 has getPressure() API.
But since previous implementations have not been successful, Apple has the marketing advantage.
Force Touch, A Right-Click On Touch-Enabled Devices
When it was first introduced, Force Touch was said to be just a marketing gimmick, meant to rehash products to make them more appealing. When people get the hold of it, Force Touch is much more than that, it's not a gimmick, it's opening new potentials on how users can interact with their devices.
The new experience comes with a layer of sensors that is sandwiched between a device's digitizer and taptic engine. These sensors cover the whole screen, and can determine how much pressure is being applied to it.
Not limited to that, Force Touch is operated with many other components. To list them: a series of electrodes, sensors that can relay information to the haptic engine and the taptic engine which imitate the sense of clicking, an electromagnetic linear actuator, connections to accelerometer and gyroscope.
When a user touches/presses the screen, the electrodes on the sensors distinguish a tap and a harder press by seeing the gap differences between the screen and the sensor. The information will then provide specific action or contextually specific control based on the force of input.
The information from the sensors is then forwarded to the operating system. The OS processes the varying levels of pressure to trigger different actions, like for example "peek" into an element or "pop" to open something completely.
The drawback for these "luxury"? An added weight. Apple's iPhone 6S and 6S Plus for example, has their screens weigh a lot more than its predecessors which don't have such feature.
As with Apple that likes to keep things simple and somehow elegant, the company decided to keep things straightforward. The Force Touch allows users to access certain UI elements, or initiating different tasks by just applying different pressure.
Android that has matured a lot since version 1.0 that include the Force Touch API, starts making its own pressure-sensitive input useful. Some Android brands, such as Huawei's highend flagship Mate S smartphone has mentioned Force Touch support.
Why Apple First?
With Apple going somehow comparable to Android, why there is reason Apple did it first while Android came second?
To answer this, we need to go deeper into the global mobile device's DNA. Nearly all highend and flagship devices share a common hardware: ARM-based processor with more-than-sufficient RAM and enough storage although highly debated. Multitasking comes with an ease, and games that were only able to run on PCs, can also run on these high-powered but power-hungry devices.
Big brands that go with Android like Samsung, LG, HTC and others usually use Corning's Gorilla Glass on top of the screen's sensors. While everything they have do support Force Touch since many years ago, what prevent Android from implementing such feature first is its diversity.
Android devices come from many manufacturers and brands. Because of this, it's obvious that different devices use different digitizers and displays, so hardware fragmentation is a problem for Android. Not just the display, almost everything that comes with it, such as the type of the glass, the type of sensors and everything else are a lot more diverse than Apple.
Apple on the other hand, does not need to worry about these issues because the company has a total control of its software and hardware. With the two in its hands, Apple can guarantee identical user-experience across all of its products and devices.
Adding Complexity
While Force Touch is indeed useful to an extent that it can provide many new ways of interacting, it can pose a huge problem to some people. And that problem is complexity.
Force Touch is not a new technology since it has been around for years. But not everyone is using it. Apple obviously thinks that it can make a big difference with Force Touch, but many people aren't yet convinced when the technology was introduced ages ago. There are many people who are fond of it, and get to use the feature more than others, but some people actually don't care. Some don't know it exists, and some may even find it a nuisance.
But to people who do follow the trends, Force Touch is indeed a breakthrough. It's more than just a shortcut, it's like a functionality of a desktop PC's right-click on a touch-enabled device. For developers, the feature can open up a variety of new things in apps.
Some of which that can be possible with Force Touch are listed below.
- Games could use the input to design more complex game interactions.
- Productivity apps could benefit by simplifying operations in words processors, spreadsheets, etc..
- Audio and video players, as well as e-book readers can improve their user experience.
- Security-related apps can use pressure to add security layers.
- Apps can use the input to provide smart operations and gestures, as well as quick actions and others.
Not limited to the list above, Force Touch that is a relatively young technology if compared to some other mobile tech, is still under heavy development. Since Apple and others are pushing developers to create more Force Touch-enabled apps, the possibilities rely on the advances of future hardware and software developments.