WhatsApp becomes the latest app to support Apple’s 3D Touch technology on current-gen iPhones. The Facebook-owned popular IM app is now offering seamless functionality with ‘Peek’ and ‘Pop’ feature supported by 3D Touch technology.
Hence, if you’ve received a picture on WhatsApp, you can press hard on the app’s icon to peek at the image. And in case you wish to reply to the sender, hard pressing on the icon pops open the full app. This also works for videos, links, contact cards and locations as well.
Peek essentially allows users to see previews of websites, photos, videos, contacts and more, doing away the need to open up another app simultaneously. Users now have the ability to jump in and out of information using the functionality. While the ‘Pop’ function allows users to zoom-in to provide a better view of the in-app features. With new features being rolled out to WhatsApp on a regular basis, the messaging platform’s rising popularity should not come as a surprise.
Beyond this major update, WhatsApp interface is now mirrored and optimized for right-to-left languages like Arabic. A complete list of languages supported in this release includes English, Arabic, Bokmål, Norwegian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.
Users can now upgrade to WhatsApp v2.12.9, which is now available on the App Store.
Notably, WhatsApp’s parent company Facebook also updated its app with 3D Touch compatibility. With the addition of 3D Touch, three quick actions will be available to iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus users when they press the app icon. Implying that by simply pressing the app icon, users can write a post, upload a photo or video, or take a photo or video.
Other third-party apps leveraging 3D Touch are Dropbox, Pinterest, WeChat, and Shazam.
3D Touch technology is apparently the biggest distinguishing factor between last year’s iPhones compared to current-gen iPhones. It adds a whole new dimension to the way users interact with iOS, as it can detect the amount of pressure one puts on the screen and which then invokes responses accordingly. In the coming future, more and more apps will be compatible with this technology as Apple is giving third-party developers access to this feature to make use of in their apps.
More and more companies are now planning to incorporate this Force Touch pressure sensitive technology on their smartphones. Samsung is reportedly planning to ‘mimic the feature’ on its upcoming Galaxy S7 smartphone expected to be announced in early January. The company has reportedly joined hands with Synaptics to use its ‘ClearForce’ technology, which essentially functions in the same way as Apple’s 3D Touch. It allows users to perform functions like variable speed scrolling, image panning and zooming, unlocking and waking up the device, right click mouse behavior for context menus and more.
