3D Touch on new iPhones: Push to activate touchpad, move your cursor and select text. World changed. Via @BenBajarin pic.twitter.com/l0oSJ0rHW8
— Matthew Panzarino (@panzer) September 22, 2015
One of the unique features of the new iPhones is 3D Touch. For those who are unfamiliar, this basically allows users to perform additional actions on their phones by pressing their phone’s displays with different amounts of force. For example a light tap might be a regular tap, while a harder press might pull up a separate menu or action.
While it was not advertised by Apple, TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzerino demonstrated one of the features of 3D Touch that finally addresses one of iOS’ many complaints. Now one of the complaints of iOS is the lack of ability to select text easily, or move between words or characters. This usually involves pressing and holding the text and trying to find the right placement.
However as you can see in the video above, this has been dealt with in 3D Touch, where pressing harder on the keyboard will turn it into a trackpad, allowing users to easily move the cursor between characters, as well as selecting them for copying/pasting. Gone are the days of trying to fiddle around with the magnifying glass.
While we have yet to test it ourselves, Panzerino claims that it is far, far faster than the current solution offered on non-3D Touch iPhones. Unfortunately since 3D Touch is hardware dependent, those without the new iPhones will have to sit this one out.
Filed in . Read more about iOS, iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus.