Credit: Ashok Kumar / Medium

However, last week Macrumors reported that a Barclay analyst shared a confirmation that 3D Touch is in fact going away. The source of these reports goes back to multiple vendors in Apple’s supply chain. The Wall Street Journal broke a similar story already in January.

Many users online speculate that the reason why 3D Touch is going away is because it’s not as intuitive as Apple had hoped it would be. And that Haptic Touch, as introduced with the iPhone XR, can comfortably replace most of 3D Touch’s functionality. There is, however, one feature that will be dearly missed according to most users online, and that’s “the press down on the keyboard to move the cursor” while typing. There is a similar function with Haptic Touch but it is not nearly as smooth.

Others speculate that the reason why Apple is abandoning 3D Touch is that the technology is limiting the future of iPhone design development. We tend to lean towards this to be the real reason why Apple would pursue this path.

Finally, we’re waiting to see how Apple can improve the richness of use cases where Haptic Touch assists in a similar way as 3D Touch can. Because, if you’ve previously owned a 3D Touch supported iPhone and transitioned to iPhone XR, this might be your biggest complaint. Apple needs to address this feedback in the new 2019 and 2020 iPhones. We should know as early as June, during WWDC ’19, when Apple unveils the nuances of 3D Touch and Haptic Touch support in iOS 13.