Android N could feel the pressure with a 3D Touch-like feature

sincity · April 14, 2016

Android N may not have a final name yet, but many of the features have been revealed through the developer previews, from multi-window support to an improved Doze mode.

The latest revelation is that Android N might support pressure-sensitive displays, allowing users to interact with the screen in much the same way as 3D Touch allows on the iPhone 6S.

We say might, because at the moment it comes down to the wording of a launcher shortcuts API, which talks about 'dynamic shortcuts'.

Under pressure

The text was spotted by Phandroid, and following the discovery Nova Launcher developer Kevin Barry tried to test it out. He failed, but confirmed that the shortcuts do appear to be gesture based, suggesting that 3D Touch-like gestures may well be supported in the final version of Android N.

It would make a certain amount of sense for Google to get on board the pressure sensing train. Inevitable accusations of copying aside it's one of the few big iOS features that you can't currently get on Android and it's got a lot of potential.

Of course even if Android N does support pressure-sensitive interactions on the software side you'll still need hardware that can make use of it, which counts out most current phones, other than perhaps the Huawei Mate S, which already has a similar Force Touch feature.

But future phones could support it and if Google's working on it there's a good chance its next Nexus handset will be the first.