Apple's next iPhones will reportedly have Force Touch, a new feature that allows the iPhones to differentiate between different kinds of forces applied to the screen.
Citing people familiar with the development of Apple's products, AppleInsider reports that the next iPhones codenamed N71 and N66, called by the media as the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus after Apple's conventional naming system, will feature Force Touch, which first appeared when Apple introduced the Apple Watch in 2014.
Force Touch, which Apple calls "the most significant new sensing capability since Multi-Touch," allows the Apple Watch to distinguish between different kinds of forces, such as a light tap compared to a deep press, using tiny electrodes placed around the Apple Watch's Retina display. Different kinds of forces will trigger different kinds of contextually specific responses. For instance, tapping lightly on the screen could bring up an action menu in Messages, or pressing deeply on the center could open up a mode to select different watch faces.
Force Touch is not to be confused with haptic feedback, which is already available in the new iPhones. While haptic feedback is an output mechanism that allows a device to communicate with the user through vibrations, such as when tapping letters on a keyboard, Force Touch is a new way to provide input simply by using different kinds of forces.
It is unclear how Apple plans to incorporate Force Touch into the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. However, AppleInsider conjectures that using Force Touch for the next family of iPhones could open up the possibility of using new, flexible materials for the screen in future iPhones. The report also says Apple thought of adding Force Touch to the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, but decided against it due to problems with "calibration."
However, while a curved display iPhone could be looming in the future ahead, we're not going to see a DSLR-like iPhone just yet despite Apple blogger John Gruber's claim that "a birdie of a birdie" told him last year that Apple will introduce an iPhone with a system that makes it work like a DSLR camera.
"The specific thing I heard is that next year's camera might be the biggest camera jump ever," Gruber told his listeners during an episode of The Talk Show podcast. "I don't even know what sense this makes, but I've heard that it's some kind of weird two-lens system where the back camera uses two lenses and it somehow takes it up into DSLR quality imagery."
Now, AppleInsider's sources say the iPhone maker will not include the DSLR-like system Gruber mentioned in November because tacking on an additional lens into the already very slim chassis will require major design changes that Apple is not likely to incorporate in the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus in keeping with the design language of the most recent iPhones, which have already been criticized due to the camera module protruding out of the back panel.
Last month, MacRumors reported that a Taiwanese news outlet cited analyst Jeff Pu who said that the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus will retain the same 8-megapixel camera found in Apple's flagship phones.
