‘Force Touch’ or ‘3D Touch’ as its also being called, is one of the hottest features on today’s smartphones. Apple has included a ‘Force Touch’ display on its Apple Watch, and on the recently introduced iPhone devices, while Huawei has also announced the Force Touch variant of their Mate S smartphone. So, what is Force Touch? Well, it’s basically a display which responds to how hard you push on it. So, for example, if you press harder on an app icon within the OS you’ll get a special list of commands, something similar to the right mouse click on a desktop. Every OEM will probably use this differently though, so there probably won’t be a standard set of options in there. The Force Touch display opens up a lot of possibilities throughout the OS, and it will be interesting to see what will it evolve into.
Anyhow, a while back, a rumor popped up that Xiaomi’s upcoming Mi 5 flagship will feature Qualcomm’s 3D fingerprint scanner. Not long after that, a new rumor surfaced claiming that’s not true. Well, as it usually happens with rumors, a new one has popped up, though this time it comes from a rather well-known tipster, @Leaksfly, in regard to Xiaomi and Force Touch technology. According to the tipster, Xiaomi is preparing to enter this domain, though he does not elaborate whether the company will develop their own tech, or will they partner up with Synaptics and take advantage of their ‘ClearForce’ tech. Interesting enough, Xiaomi and Synaptics have already worked together when the company was getting ready to release the Mi 4i smartphone, so that could indicate that the two companies plan to partner up once again. This partnership wasn’t connected to ‘ClearForce’ but Synaptics’ ClearPad S3708 touch controller.
A recent rumor has also suggested that Synaptics and Samsung might partner up moving forward. It is still unclear whether this will happen, or is it just a rumor, but we did see one of Samsung’s patents recently which indicates that the company is working on their own ‘Force Touch’ technology that will be implemented in their future devices. Either way, stay tuned for more info, we’ll report back as soon as something useful pops up.