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Apple could remove 3D Touch from future iPhones, analyst says

Apple could remove 3D Touch from future iPhones, analyst says

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No Pencil support this year, either

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Apple made a huge deal about 3D Touch when it came to the iPhone in 2015. Now, just a few generations later, Apple’s pressure-sensitive screen technology might be on its way out the door.

Barclays analyst Blayne Curtis said today that it’s “widely understood” that some of next year’s iPhones won’t include 3D Touch, according to MacRumors, which saw his note to investors.

“We’re going to waste a whole year of engineering ... if it doesn’t do something that [people] are going to use.”

Curtis seemed to be referring to 2019’s flagship iPhones, which would presumably be the successors to this year’s two rumored high-end OLED models, which will use the same screen technology as the iPhone X. That still leaves the third rumored model, which is supposed to look like a larger version of the iPhone X with a cheaper LCD screen; but another analyst, the very reliable Ming-Chi Kuo, said months ago that it would drop 3D Touch this year.

If both analysts are right, and signals aren’t being crossed here, it would mean that 3D Touch is entirely being removed and will disappear from new iPhones by 2019.

3D Touch was essentially the flagship feature on the iPhone 6S, so this would be a major admission of failure on Apple’s part. Not only that, but it would speak to an immense waste of resources — something Apple’s marketing chief told Bloomberg right after the feature launched:

“Engineering-wise, the hardware to build a display that does what [3D Touch] does is unbelievably hard,” says [Phil Schiller, Apple’s marketing chief]. “And we’re going to waste a whole year of engineering — really, two — at a tremendous amount of cost and investment in manufacturing if it doesn’t do something that [people] are going to use. If it’s just a demo feature and a month later nobody is really using it, this is a huge waste of engineering talent.”

In the years since, the feature really hasn’t caught on. And, anecdotally, I’d guess that most iPhone users don’t even know that it’s there. Even more serious iPhone owners don’t seem to have found much use in it. And while the tech is still used in the Apple Watch, it has yet to make its way to iPads.

It’s too early to get into a deep dive on 3D Touch’s failures since it’s still entirely possible that the rumors are partly or entirely wrong. Apple could have built the tech into new iPhones through some other method that these analysts’ sources are missing, or the models could be getting mixed up so that some phones have it but others don’t. We’ll find out in part, at least, within a month — Apple’s next iPhones should be announced in mid-September, when we’ll see if any of the new models are missing the screen tech.

In other iPhone rumors, MacRumors also spotted a new note from Kuo saying that none of the upcoming iPhones will support the Apple Pencil. There had been some discussion of that possibility over the past months since the new iPhones are expected to be larger in size. But Kuo says Apple decided against it because it offered a poor user experience.

Curtis, the Barclays analyst, also said he expected a cheaper HomePod next year and new AirPods later this year.

Correction August 28th, 9:05AM ET: Curtis’ prediction refers to the 2019 OLED iPhones, not this year’s OLED iPhones, as this article initially stated. The article has been updated to state that 3D Touch would disappear next year, not this year.