One of the biggest features of the most recent iteration of the iPhone was its pressure sensitive screen. The hardware is hardly different compared to the one of its predecessor, but according to Apple, this feature, which they call “3D Touch” and other smaller features change everything. Actually, the first device to include a pressure sensitive display was the Huawei Mate S, which runs Android. While Huawei and Apple introduced some uses for such screens, it is up for developers to introduce new features for this type of screens. Now, Google has updated its app on iOS to version 12.0 and besides the typical bug fixes and stability improvements, the company has added a new feature supporting 3D Touch.
Once the app gets updated, when users hard press on the Google App icon, they will now get the chance to press a new button that is labeled “I’m feeling curious” and it will provide them a fun fact. Users will be able to read a random question from a variety of topics and its respective answer. These answers are found on university websites, government indexes, Wikipedia, About.com and History.com and each of them includes a link to the source, in case they want to read more about it. There’s even a button below the answer called “Ask Another Question”, in case they found the given fact uninteresting or their thirst for knowledge wasn’t satisfied. This is actually not a new feature, as it can be accessed on Google’s search engine by typing terms such as “fun facts”, “random facts” or “I’m feeling curious”. This feature is also accessible from the Google Now App on Android either by typing or speaking one of the aforementioned terms. Still, for iOS users, this is a very convenient and easy way to access Google’s list of fun facts.
Pressure sensitive displays are expected to be present in some flagship devices along the year, so we will have to see how this technology gets ultimately used. Google might even be thinking of ways to implement it on the Android operating system, so the next version might be controlled a little different than it does today.