Mike Peterson
Apple's Haptic Touch feature does not appear to function for notifications on the new iPhone SE, according to user reports and our own testing.
Usually, an iOS feature called Haptic Touch allows users to long press on a notification on the Lock screen or Notification Center to bring up rich notification options. That functionality appears absent from the iPhone SE.
Since the iPhone SE shipped to customers on April 24, there have been a handful of complaints on Reddit, Twitter and other social platforms about the missing feature. As anecdotal reports indicate, Haptic Touch works on the iPhone SE in other areas of the system, such as on app icons on the Home screen.
AppleInsider confirmed that Haptic Touch does not work with notifications on the Lock screen and Notification Center with our own iPhone SE device.
When we tested an iPhone 8 — the progenitor of iPhone SE — running the latest version of iOS 13, we were able to use Haptic Touch on notifications normally. The iPhone 8 does have 3D Touch, however.
Haptic Touch does appear to work fine on incoming notifications when an iPhone is currently in use. That could suggest that this is a bug or some type of software oversight.
One Redditor said they contacted Apple Support, who reportedly confirmed that this is an issue. Interestingly, that Apple Support customer also apparently told the Reddit user that there's no software update planned to fix it.
Of course, Apple Support staff aren't always privy to information about Apple's upcoming hardware and software releases, so a fix could be in the works.
Update: TechCrunch's Matthew Panzarino in a tweet confirmed Haptic Touch is "working as intended" on iPhone SE, suggesting the functionality will not be added in a future update.
Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
8 Comments
Probably just a software fix is needed.
It is of note how the loss of 3D Touch is still annoying, the iPhone 8 (which the SE appears to have) had the feature, but I guess it goes to show they still wanted to eliminate it.
That’s odd as there seems to be no hardware or software reason for it not to be available on the lock screen as it’s available normally in other circumstances
One of the only things that genuinely bothered me about the newer iPhones is the lack of 3D Touch via the hardware. It was very useful and after getting used to it, Haptic Touch seems like a compromise.
3D Touch is badly implemented in iOS where it already has been. That said, I HAVE grown accustomed to using it on notifications. This is one of several areas where Apple have not done due diligence on a feature and then reversed course instead of fixing it.