It wouldn’t be the first time someone has managed to hack a form of force touch into a phone without the usual hardware, though. BGR points out that shortly after Apple announced 3D Touch, someone managed to demo force touch-like features on a Sony Xperia by using the device’s barometer to detect hard presses. A research team at the University of MI have developed a way to add this feature to any smartphone using components that are already in your mobile device: the mic and speaker.
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Would you welcome touch sensitivity on your next phone, or is it a gimmick?
I bet you never heard about ForcePhone technology, but you’re in for a real treat guys.
Using a special layer placed on top of the device’s display, 3D Touch allowed users to access additional menus and shortcuts when different amounts of pressure are applied to the phone’s screen.
Currently, only Apple’s flagship iPhone 6s has been powered with innovative force-sensitive features.
Press down on the screen or squeeze your phone in your hand and you’ll cause the pitch to change.
ForcePhone makes the smartphone emit 18 kHz buzz in a continuous manner.
ForcePhone is the third in a series of apps inspired by 2008’s The Dark Knight, in which Batman turns Gotham City’s smartphones into a sonar system to track the Joker. Once an area of the screen is pressed, the program detects the changes in the sound.
‘We’ve augmented the user interface without requiring any special built-in sensors.
“Now this functionality can be realized on any phone”, Kang Shin, computer science professor with the U-M Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, said in a statement.
Calling ForcePhone “the next step forward from a basic touch interface”, Tung said the low-priced technology could complement other gestured communication channels, as well as voice commands. However, Yu-Chin Tung also believes that their “sound-based solution can fill this gap, providing the functionality without making any hardware modification”. “Everything is just software.” .
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There’s no news on a possible public release for this ForcePhone technology, but it’s interesting to see a pure software alternative to one of the best smartphone hardware innovations of recent years.
