Google Pixel 4 gets iPhone’s 3D Touch-like feature

Among its series of new Pixel feature drops, one resembles the iPhone’s 3D Touch feature.

The Pixel 4 smartphone is displayed during the Made by Google event in New York, U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2019. Google is going back to basics for its latest laptop: a standard clam-shell design that moves away from the previous foldable, tablet-style Pixelbook. (Bloomberg)

Google on Tuesday made its second 'Pixel feature drop' with 12 new features for its Pixel phones. Among these new software features for Pixel phones there's one which is closely similar to the iPhone's 3D Touch. Google is however using software for this and not hardware like Apple did.

This Pixel feature was discovered by The Verge and can be found under "Improvements to long press" in Google's support page. This software tweak by Google essentially lets users "firmly press" the app icon to launch different actions for that particular app. Google is rolling out this feature only to the Pixel 4 for now. The company also confirmed to The Verge more details about this feature.

"Long Press currently works in a select set of apps and system user interfaces such as the app Launcher, Photos, and Drive. This update accelerates the press to bring up more options faster. We also plan to expand its applications to more first party apps in the near future," Google said.

Once this feature is available on the Pixel 4, the phone's software will understand when there's added pressure on the app which will then launch further actions faster. Unlike Apple, Google is using its machine learning algorithms to make this feature work on the Pixel 4. Apple had to rely on hardware for 3D Touch and later discontinued it. But it was one feature iPhone users were very fond of. Now Pixel 4 users can enjoy this iPhone-like 3D Touch.