Android N to get pressure-sensitive displays, mimicking Apple’s 3D touch for iPhone

The feature allows people to perform actions more quickly – without ever going into an app

Google is bringing the biggest new feature of iPhones to Android.

The company looks set to support pressure-sensitive displays in the next version of its operating system, Android N. That will let it catch up with Apple, which put the technology into its iPhone 6s late last year under the name 3D Touch.

The rumour comes from Google’s support for “Launcher shortcuts” in the latest beta version of the upcoming operating system. Google describes that feature as allowing developers to “define shortcuts which users can expose in the launcher to help them perform actions quicker”.

That is an almost exact description of how 3D Touch works on the iPhone. It allows people to quickly get to certain parts of the app: selecting the “Record Video” option on the camera app means that people can record video with one press, for instance.

Google still hasn’t said how the option to launch the shortcuts will be triggered. But since it looks exactly the same as it does on the iPhone, and so will likely be triggered the same way – with a hard press on the app shortcut, rather than a soft one.

Since device makers decide what they want to do with Android, there’s no guarantee that the feature will eventually make its way to many handsets. But Huawei has already brought the feature to Android with its own code and so more handsets are likely to have it in the future.