Force Touch, or 3D Touch, depending on what manufacturer you listen too, has been a pretty big feature in the past few months. Since Apple announced it in 2015. Basically what Force Touch does is it uses pressure sensitivity to see how hard you are pressing on the display and can do a variety of things. Allowing you to have a few new features that are app-based. For instance on the Meizu PRO 6, you can press on the settings icon and have shortcuts to things like WiFi, Bluetooth, etc. Which are common settings that you might use quite a bit. So it’s great to be able to use them without going into the app, or going straight to WiFi settings, saving you a step or two. Instagram has already added their own version of Force Touch into their Android app, allowing you to press on a picture and enlarge it. Without having to tap on it. Not necessarily revolutionary, but a pretty cool feature to have.
In the second developer preview for Android N, which was released last month, there were some hints at Google creating their own Force Touch feature in Android. This would allow developers to implement the pressure sensitivity feature into their apps. However, according to a report from Recode this morning, the feature won’t be ready for the Android N public release this fall. However they do say that it’ll probably come in a “maintenance update to the software.”
Many of the smartphones coming out of China have Force Touch, or a variation of that feature already included. Many call them different things, for instance Meizu calls theirs “mPress”. While some phones do support it, many others don’t. Which would mean that developers would need to alter the code in their app to work with Force Touch on specific devices, and in the world of Android, that can be a daunting task.
Google hasn’t yet confirmed that this delay is happening, and they likely won’t. However we may see it come in a maintenance update, or it could be a headlining feature for Android O last year. Much like multi-window was with Android N after appearing in Android M Developer Previews last year.