Haptic Touch vs 3D Touch: What's the Difference?

[DeepIn2U]

similar to the headphone jack, yet here we are

not even close buddy. Bluetooth was VERY mature when iPhone 7 released and announce with late shipping AirPods! This haptic bs is NOt mature and splashing it everywhere especially on devices with 3D Touch devices seems like horrible coding even lazy coding of iOS 13 yet then again lol who’s in charge we’ve seen this garbage before - recall the sudo command line screwup which the default admin has no password in OS X Maverick?! Yeah that’s just one thing an OS leader should have tested and never missed not ever! Dark Mode is well done, a bit intense but well done yet why so long on OS X and iOS?

no Haptic Touch is not mature at all. 3D Touch’sengine or actuator May have taken up precious space within devices but it could’ve been shrunken or bring us Force Touch like the Watch: space is at a premium of micro millimeters there so there is NO excuse to get it on iphones and iPads.
Cost cutting here is ridiculous time to cost cut on bonuses those are getting out of hand and the board needs a slap for allowing it!
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3D Touch has been almost deactivated with ios13 on all devices that support it. In safari for example, a stronger press on link doesn’t open it, it only stays at the preview window and it doesn’t matter how hard or long you touch the icons of the apps, it still activates the time extra menus the same time it needs with a very light touch. Apple paves the way to make us forget 3D Touch existed. Stronger press on the keyboard activated the cursor though and it’s the only thing I will miss.

time to vote with letters, emails, threads like this linked in the above on blogs and tweets always naming Craig F and Tim and others in the iOS coding team. Finally we vote with dollars!

if the Mac Pro team created a paradigm shift in decision making at Apple after the Trash Can then I’m certain in iPhone users we can too!

 

[Wide opeN]

I don’t buy the iPad reasoning either. They even renamed the OS specifically for iPad. They’re not supposed to be the same. I think it’s because Apple cheaped out on the cheaper phones by not including 3D Touch, which fragmented the feature past the 6s. I don’t know why they thought that was a good idea since of course more people will buy the cheaper phone! That means less phones in the Wild that have 3D Touch...

I think Apple thought the feature would go quiet into the night. They were wrong. It should have definitely been left on the pro models.

 

[supergt]

I’m not one to generally favor lawsuits but I do hope there’s some kind of class action regarding 3D Touch supported devices on iOS 13. They’ve basically reduced the functionality such that it’s hardly there. I think it goes beyond lazy coding. Apple doesn’t want to sell a new iPhone that’s inferior to the rest of the product line. Therefore they essentially killed the feature everywhere. It’s shameful and I hope there’s action on this.

 

[C DM]

I’m glad it and the headphone jack have gone.
Both pointless antiques that deserve to be in the bin.

3D Touch is an antiquity?
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So iOS 13 eliminates 3D touch entirely? Yikes...

It’s still there, just not in the same exact form in a lot of places, as mentioned in various posts.
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I can't believe anyone really cares about this. They are virtualy the same. It's that damn lightening cable I want see go bye-bye.

Probably because they aren’t exactly the same, or even just the same.

 

[C DM]

Sometimes, we get attached to a crappy feature. 3D Touch was garbage and now it's gone.

Seems like it was pretty much the opposite of that for many.

 

[44267547]

It stinks omg I miss the force touch I want my money back.

Fun fact:

The term ‘Force touch’ is actually Apple’s version of marketing 3D Touch for the Apple Watch, which invokes similar actions with secondary options.

That said, Force touch is very much like 3D Touch, Apple never really marketed aside from the keynote, and I’m guessing many have no idea really how to manipulate it.

 

[pika2000]

During the days of the 6s/7, I frequently saw posts about people claiming that they don’t use 3D Touch, that it was a gimmick, etc etc.
Now suddenly everybody uses it and it’s a critical function for them.

Amazing.

My 3D Touch use are for initiating task switcher (by 3D Touch on the left side), and turning the screen off by 3D touching the assistive virtual button. Most because I’m on the 6s and I want to prolong the life of my mechanical home button as long as possible.

 

[johannesk]

My favorite 3D Touch feature was that after you pressed hard anywhere on the keyboard to get the cursor, you could move it on top of a word and press hard again to select that word. Or 3D press twice to select the whole sentence. Don’t know how to do that with Haptic.
There’s a similar way to select with Haptic but that requires two fingers (press with a second finger while in cursor mode to switch to select) but that can’t do the automatic word selection and who has two thumbs available on the hand you’re holding the iPhone with...

 

[C DM]

Fun fact:

The term ‘Force touch’ is actually Apple’s version of marketing 3D Touch for the Apple Watch, which invokes similar actions with secondary options.

That said, Force touch is very much like 3D Touch, Apple never really marketed aside from the keynote, and I’m guessing many have no idea really how to manipulate it.

There have been some mentions of the supposed difference between Force Touch and 3D Touch being that 3D Touch can offer more/different options based on different levels of pressure.

 

[redheeler]

During the days of the 6s/7, I frequently saw posts about people claiming that they don’t use 3D Touch, that it was a gimmick, etc etc.
Now suddenly everybody uses it and it’s a critical function for them.

Amazing.

My 3D Touch use are for initiating task switcher (by 3D Touch on the left side), and turning the screen off by 3D touching the assistive virtual button. Most because I’m on the 6s and I want to prolong the life of my mechanical home button as long as possible.

I appreciated 3D Touch the moment I first used it on my 6s Plus. Admittedly this was partly due to Apple's early software-based marketing of it, as the previews and menus could've been (and later were) brought to other devices using the long press.

However, the peek and pop of 3D Touch still feels more intuitive to me than the long-press on my iPad, and being able to 3D Touch anywhere on the keyboard to move the cursor is nice as well. I can see myself getting used to the feature being gone, but its disappearance is a downgrade that really shouldn't be viewed as tolerable at a time when many of us struggle to justify these high upgrade prices. At $1,000+ for a new iPhone I expect everything to be better, not some things better and some things worse compared to my current four-year-old model.

 

[C DM]

During the days of the 6s/7, I frequently saw posts about people claiming that they don’t use 3D Touch, that it was a gimmick, etc etc.
Now suddenly everybody uses it and it’s a critical function for them.

Amazing.

My 3D Touch use are for initiating task switcher (by 3D Touch on the left side), and turning the screen off by 3D touching the assistive virtual button. Most because I’m on the 6s and I want to prolong the life of my mechanical home button as long as possible.

Quite likely that different groups of people are involved, given that then and now there are those who make use of it and like it and those who don’t use it and perhaps don’t even like it.

 

[kegan forbes]

i returned my 11 pro max mainly due to how much haptic touch sucks ass in comparison to 3d touch and how it just felt like a huge downgrade. i hope apple design engineers come to their senses and put it back next year. for now I'm sticking with my xs max.

 

[alexhardaker]

Is it just me or can you no longer peek at links in iMessage?

Also, the selecting of words using the cursor hardly ever worked for me. I miss 3D Touch. I’m surprised not a lot of my friends knew about it. I used it to preview links, messages etc. I do like that you can let go of the screen to preview things now. I never used 3D Touch on the home screen.

 

[redheeler]

similar to the headphone jack, yet here we are

The headphone jack was an easy fix with the included dongle (or later a separate $10 purchase). Or buy a set of AirPods or other wireless headphones / speakers if you so choose.

3D Touch? If it's gone, it's gone. Long-press can peek but not pop. It takes a fraction of a second longer for every action. No more moving the cursor from anywhere on the keyboard. It's not a good substitute for 3D Touch and never was.

Thinking back to the headphone jack, if every dongle only outputted mono sound instead of stereo it wouldn't have been a good substitute either. However, that was never the case.

 

[countryside]

Also, I miss using it on the keyboard anywhere to get a cursor, not just the small keyboard...

This.

If only haptic touch could support the cursor "text search" mode when typing, I would then be able to live with it with no regrets.

 

[apolloa]

3D Touch better then Haptic Touch anyday.

 

[Ruggy]

3D touch is still there above the settings for Haptic Touch on my XS Max, so it can still be used, but it's just ”one level” and does the same way as a ”long touch” (i.e. Haptic Touch).

By the way, does anyone notice any difference between the ”Fast” and ”Slow” touch duration settings? Seems about the same to me...

Edit:
Okay, there is a slight difference but I think it's hard to tell there on the test image. More noticeable for me for icons on the home screen (for example) for some reason.

Edit 2:
One problem I see with Haptic Touch is that it relatively easy can be accidentally activated on an item (happens to me quite often for links on pages in Safari for example). Not so with 3D Touch. While there is an option to disable 3D Touch I see no way of disabling Haptic Touch and using only 3D Touch for those of us that has a device that supports it. Too bad…

As you say, the difference is tiny.
But, if you switch off the 3D/Haptic touch altogether in Accessibility, the haptic still works but is a bit less sensitive or something so you don't get as many of those annoying accidents.
I agree, it would be nice to have a control to keep 3D only but we can't so that's the second best option for the moment.
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Agreed and agreed. Especially for the keyboard cursor. Huge loss, imo.

Agreedx2
Also, there are corrections you can't make when activating the curser from the spacebar because you can't reach up high enough in the text.
Sometimes, you just need to activate it from the top of the keyboard to get it where you want.

 

[Virinprew]

Funny the way it is how when 3D Touch was around, people were asking “why does this exist?”. Now that it’s gone, people are asking “why did they take it away?”

Some voted Trump. Some didn’t vote Trump. It isn’t hard to understand. Why can’t you...?

 

[odoy]

What's the difference?:
One sucks. One works

no sh**! that was exactly my first thought, after I read the headline 🤣🤣

 

[fokmik]

There has been some mentions of the supposed difference between Force Touch and 3D Touch being that 3D Touch can offer more/different options based on different levels of pressure.

Like on the mac trackpad

 

[Agit21]

Glad 3D Touch is gone. A long press does the trick for me. No difference.

 

[C DM]

This.

If only haptic touch could support the cursor "text search" mode when typing, I would then be able to live with it with no regrets.

Well, you can mostly do it using Haptic Touch (long press) on the spacebar.

Agreedx2
Also, there are corrections you can't make when activating the curser from the spacebar because you can't reach up high enough in the text.
Sometimes, you just need to activate it from the top of the keyboard to get it where you want.

You can use the spacebar to activate the trackpad and then quickly lift your finger and move it higher up so you’d have more space to move around.

 

[Radon87000]

Only miss the 3DT gesture for the app switcher and the instant trackpad anywhere on the keyboard. Haptic Touch is excellent and allows for much better battery life which is a far better trade off

 

[C DM]

Only miss the 3DT gesture for the app switcher and the instant trackpad anywhere on the keyboard. Haptic Touch is excellent and allows for much better battery life which is a far better trade off

This is coming from someone that saw a potential fraction of a second slower response from the home button as something that just completely ruined a device, given that Haptic Touch performance is certainly more noticeable than even that? Quite an inconsistently.

And much better battery life?

 

[lazyrighteye]

... Also, there are corrections you can't make when activating the curser from the spacebar because you can't reach up high enough in the text.
Sometimes, you just need to activate it from the top of the keyboard to get it where you want.

For me, THAT ☝ is one of the more noticeable misses.

As I’m beginning to better understand the differences between the 3-D Touch on my previous XS and the new-to-me Haptic Touch on my 11 Pro, I’m finding the haptic keyboard cursor scenario unfortunate - made only more awful when in Dark Mode where that hairline-blue-cursor-atop-a-black-page implementation is nothing short of a usability nightmare. The lack of contrast makes it (and the text highlight blue) very hard to see (so says Mr. 20/20). Blue-on-black is an easy Color Theory 101 solution (tho I suppose there is an overall OS aesthetic for which said easy solution must also work - which may muddy said easy solution). Hell, keep it blue - just brighten it up.

Also, the sluggish-to-initiate tap-and-hold-and-wait Haptic Touch fosters a perception and/or a subconscious sense of a slower experience than that of the my XS. This likely matters to a pretty niche handful of those moving from [say] an XS to [say] an 11 Pro.

While I’m here... With a word highlighted in Dark Mode, the pop up options (Cut | Copy | Paste | BIU | etc.) would do much better as black text on a white bar. As it stands, the white-text-on-black pop ups blend right in with the white-text-on-black body copy. Again, if not a color change, at least brighten that blue pretty significantly).

I’ve only had my 11 Pro a week, so maybe I’ll get used to it. Maybe not. Until then, let’s see if this new 3-camera scenario is all what Apple marketing efforts would have us believe...