Touch screen technologies are extremely widespread today, and we cannot conceive of using a smartphone or tablet without being able to touch the screen, although we also find them incorporated in many laptops and especially in 2-in-1 devices . In this article we are going to tell you what the different touch screen technologies such as Force Touch , 3D Touch and Haptic Touch are and how they work so that you understand them and know how to differentiate them easily.
When you use a touch screen device, you probably see terms like “3D Touch” or “Haptic Touch”, and they really are terms quite easy to confuse and you may not even know what actions each of them performs on your device. so let’s proceed to explain them in detail.
Force Touch explains pressure levels on a touch screen
Both 3D Touch and Haptic Touch fall under the umbrella of Force Touch functionality, the general name Apple christened the technology that allows input devices like touchscreens to distinguish between different levels of pressure when you touch them.
Depending on the device you are using, Force Touch may have a different name and works in a slightly different way. For example, when this technology was launched in 2015 with the first Apple Watch it was called Force Touch, but when a similar feature arrived on the iPhone 6S later that year, Apple called it 3D Touch, but with the new iPhone 11, Apple gave it a try. It changed its name again and is now called Haptic Touch.
Meanwhile, this technology is also included not only in touch screens, but also in the trackpads of laptops and even in the Magic Trackpad 2. Currently, not only Apple devices incorporate it but we can see it in computers laptops, 2-in-1 convertibles, tablets and smartphones from other brands (although often under different names). Let’s take a look at these features and how their functionality has changed over time.
What is 3D Touch?
This technology incorporates an additional layer on the touch screen that allows the level of pressure applied to it to be detected and, by means of this detection and its implementation in the software, allows different actions to be carried out according to the pressure exerted on the screen. For example, on an iPhone you can press hard on an App to get its conceptual menu that shows shortcuts, or on a Microsoft Surface it allows you to get the same menu that we would get by clicking the right mouse button.
3D Touch has different input levels, so it is able to detect when you simply press (click), when you press a little (show a preview) or when you press hard (pop). When it was new, 3D Touch seemed like a whole new world especially in the world of smartphones, like right-clicking without having a mouse, doing it with your fingers.
However, this technology ended up passing without pain or glory because most users did not even know they had it, and also there was no clear way to know when something would work with 3D Touch, so you had to try and see how the system reacted. Also, not all applications used it, so it was quite useless at times, which brings us to the next point.
What is Haptic Touch on a touch screen?
Initially, this technology appeared in the iPhone XR, the second generation of iPhone SE and from the iPhone 11 onwards, and after that it has of course been implemented in devices of other brands and laptops, tablets and others.
This touch screen technology provides functionality similar to 3D Touch but with one fundamental difference: when you press the screen in any way other than a “click”, you receive a response in the form of a small vibration (known as haptic feedback) to let you know instantly that you have activated the functionality, but it has the peculiarity that that pressure-sensitive hardware layer has been removed, so it is simply for when you press and hold.
Essentially, Haptic Touch is nothing but a long press, and because it can’t detect multiple levels of pressure like 3D Touch, you can’t use the preview and pop features – instead, we now need to tap on the preview to load it ( pop).
How useful is this technology outside of smartphones?
Smartphones are really what we know most about touchscreens because, in the modern world, hardly anyone is left without one in their pocket. However, this touch screen technology has great utility outside the smartphone industry and proof of this is that it is also incorporated into other devices such as:
- Tablets
- Digitizer tablets
- Laptops
- 2-in-1 convertibles
- Notebook trackpads
The simple fact of being able to perform other types of actions simply by changing the way you press is already extremely useful and, in fact, avoids the use of physical buttons, which can be a great advantage and especially when we talk about laptop trackpads , being able to eliminate the need for buttons.