The first iOS 13 developer beta is now available, and users are discovering that Apple’s 3D Touch functionality seems to have been all but replaced. 9to5Mac reports that many of the feature’s key pieces of functionality, like the context menu that appears when you press down hard on an app’s icon on the home screen, can now be accessed via a long press. The new gesture is available on all iPhones and iPads, regardless of whether they previously supported 3D Touch.

It’s not entirely unexpected that 3D Touch might be on its way out. Last year, Apple omitted the feature on the iPhone XR, and its replacement Haptic Touch feature was so capable that it made 3D Touch feel a little unnecessary in comparison. The ability to swipe on an iPhone’s keyboard to move your cursor, another useful 3D Touch feature, was also recently brought to non-3D Touch iPhones with iOS 12.

Still, it’s not an entirely seamless workaround. 9to5Mac notes that you can no longer “pop” into a link preview by pushing a little harder on the screen, and you can’t select an item from an app’s context menu without lifting your finger off your phone’s screen. But this functionality could still be tweaked as iOS 13 nears its final release, at which point multiple reports suggest that we’ll see the first Apple flagship phone since the iPhone 6S to ship without support for 3D Touch.

Source: theverge