Friday, May 13, 2016

Google's 3D Touch update won't be ready for Android N


One of the neatest features of the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus is 3D Touch. Apple’s “taptic” engine — a combination of over 90 pressure sensors and haptic motors that work in lockstep to mimic the feeling of physical feedback — enables all sorts of unique interactions with apps and icons. You can “feel” keys on a virtual piano give way as you increasingly apply force, for instance, or “peek” and “pop” into profile previews within Instagram. It’s only logical, then, that Google’s working on a comparable technology of its own, but it’s apparently not going to happen overnight. Tech blog Re/code reports that the Mountain View company’s indefinitely delaying support for a 3D Touch-like framework for Android.

According to a report in Recode, quoting sources, "...the feature will not be part of the initial Android N release and will have to wait for a later release of the operating system, most likely as part of a maintenance update to the software."

3D Touch is one of the key USPs of Apple iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus. Essentially a derivative of the Force Touch technology used in Apple Watch, the feature offers the ability to differentiate between types of touches and taps and perform different functions. It even lets users directly jump to certain sections of the app directly from the homescreen. Users can update status, upload existing photos and videos and take photos and videos for sharing on Facebook without opening the app by force tapping the Facebook icon on the homescreen.

Recently, there were reports that HTC, which is said to be manufacturing the next Nexushandset, will be using a 3D Touch-like pressure sensitive display technology in the 2016 Google smartphone.

Android N Developer Preview 2, Google’s bleeding-edge edition of Android, contained references to gesture-based shortcuts similar to those supported by 3D Touch. It referred to “dynamic” shortcuts that, much like the Mail, Maps, and Music icons on iPhones with 3D Touch support, would respond to interactions beyond simple taps and drags:

“The user may ‘pin’ dynamic shortcuts on [the Android home screen] to make ‘pinned shortcuts.’ Pinned shortcuts cannot be removed by the creator app … [and] applications should keep the pinned shortcut information up-to-date …”

The reason for the delay’s anyone’s guess. One possibility, though, is that Google’s virtual reality efforts took precedent. The company’s expected to reveal a stand-alone, Android-powered VR headset at its I/O developer conference next week, a device effort that’ll reportedly dovetail with an internal project — “Mirage” — aimed at building a unified framework for Android VR developers.

Google is holding its annual developers conference I/O 2016 from May 18-20th where it is expected to reveal more about its next version of its mobile operating system dubbed Android N.




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