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Comment by ericabiz | Hacker News Reader

Sure. A lot of people thought when Apple removed the headphone jack that it would make room for a bigger battery, specifically. But Apple didn't use the space that way. They put the Taptic Engine there instead. The bigger Taptic engine on e.g. an iPhone 8 vs. 6 is used for two things:

1) 7/8 series have a home button that doesn't actually push. The Taptic Engine mimics the feel of a button push.

2) It allows for different types of vibration, e.g. when hitting the corner of the screen while dragging or for more subtle notifications. (https://www.androidcentral.com/its-2018-and-android-phones-s...)

The iPhone 6 battery is 1810mAh, whereas the 8 is 1821mAh. So they didn't increase the battery size; they added the Taptic Engine instead, and got rid of the mechanical home button.

Articles gush about the Taptic Engine, but I'd still rather have my headphone jack back. And I liked the clicky home buttons.

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> It doesn't create more room inside the phone […]

> They put the Taptic Engine there instead.

It sounds like it created the room for the Taptic Engine.

The 6S had a taptic engine AND a 3.5mm jack.

And ~100 fewer mAh than the models mentioned above, which precede and follow it. Seems like Apple did use the space to increase battery size, then.

Maybe? Would have to look at side by side of 6S and 8. The 8 is a tad thicker, but that may be the glass.

I wonder what the net change in weight and volume was with the removal of the home button and expansion of the display.

The Taptic Engine existed because they decided to do away with the mechanical home button, ostensibly for "waterproofing." The decision to retain tactility led to necessity for a larger more precise vibration motor, and then punting the headphone jack out of the phone became the obvious thing to do, with a bunch of post-rationalization externally and internal justification hinged around accessory sales.

So they did create space by removing the headphone jack; you just think they used that space unwisely (or that that space would have been best used for a headphone jack).

Waterproofing and reliability -- word started to go around that the home button would break after a while. The "fix" for this was to make the home button a fake capacitive button, and that required a bigger vibration motor.

AIUI the home button was by far the least reliable component left on the phone and the biggest driver of AppleCare support for non-accidental damage.

The problem was so bad that it became an Asian cultural thing to turn on the accessibility feature that gave you an on-screen home button control and to use that exclusively, literally never touching your real home button, because you needed the real home button to remain intact for when you wanted to sell your phone later.

Another option would've been to remove the physical button entirely, which is exactly what happened with the iPhone X (I think? I've never used one; only seen pictures) and with pretty much every flagship (and even less-than-flagship) Android phone nowadays.

> And I liked the clicky home buttons.

Really? I enjoy the fake home buttons much more. In fact, the only iPhone part I've had fail on me was the old style home button. Happened twice.

I also had this experience, as have many of my friends who now know what "Adaptive Touch" means.

Agreed. I replaced the home button in a couple of my wife's iPhones and it's a pain to replace. It's one of the first things that goes into the phone when they assemble it, which means you have to take nearly everything else out to get to it. Haven't had a problem with the solid state home button.

The Taptic Engine, along with 3D Touch is probably the most useless things ever on an iPhone. Some may argue that the home button is a moving part and can fail but personally I've never had any issue with them. I don't think the occasional failures (that are bound to happen no matter what) warrant redesigning the entire mechanism.

3D Touch to quick jump to a app with a notification buried in a folder is amazing

> Some may argue that the home button is a moving part and can fail but personally I've never had any issue with them.

Asia wishes to disagree with you.

There are literally millions of people here who turn on AssistiveTouch on a brand new phone for no other reason than to not use the physical home button because they believe it will wear out/break.

> they believe it will wear out/break

But does it actually? Because if it's just a belief, nothing prevents the same belief from occurring with the 3D Touch home button. I guess it's going to be a feedback loop because obviously there wouldn't be reports of failures if nobody uses the physical button, but assuming normal usage, does the button fail frequently enough to be a concern? I think the west is a clear proof that this is not the case (unless something in Asia is breaking the buttons - climate maybe?).

Button working fine on my 6s, older 5 my wife used worked fine as well. The 5 was finally replaced when the battery expanded. Anecdotal evidence says they are dependable.

It does, actually, AIUI the home button was the #1 driver of AppleCare incidents for non-accidental damage. It had the highest failure rate of any component on the phone.

That’s a mass hysteria over nothing. Unfortunately it’s impossible to fix.

The home button on my 5S failed (followed by the screen). So it’s not nothing. It may be an exaggerated fear but it’s clearly based on some failures, otherwise they wouldn’t use the phone at all, in case the screen “breaks”

I guess the difference between the screen and the button is that the screen is mandatory for using the phone, while the button is optional.

Also I'm sure those people wouldn't actually use the phone at all if they had an equivalent way to achieve the same tasks that doesn't involve risking breaking a phone.

Finally let's put it that way - if you use AssistiveTouch right away you lose the home button. If it breaks after X months/years of use you also lose the home button. Wouldn't it still be better to get value out of the button while it's still working rather than falling back to AT right away?

I didn’t say I agree with their usage patterns, just explaining that they have them (I’m not Asian but live here)

It may be a cost/value issue. Better to protect a perceived fragile part so it’s not damaged when they want to sell it for a newer model.

Asia wishes to disagree with you.

Yes, that was parent's "some may argue..." part. That doesn't mean Asia are right. Some in that same part of the world would argue that running a fan can kill me, so something something urban legends.

yeah, that's been written about before. It's a false belief based on info that's not applicable to current devices. It is just baseless superstition at this point. Unfortunately, everyone believes it and makes their lives far worse with that stupid assistive touch thing when they don't need to.

...whereas I use 3D Touch all the time to interact with notifications and icons. It's an important part of my "workflow" because I can do certain things ("yes I just took that medication") rapidly and barely interrupting what I was actually in the middle of doing, which is living my life.

I agree discovery of 3D interactions is terrible -- essentially nonexistent -- which does justify the epithet "useless" to some degree.

Please, can you comment on which app you use to control your medications? From your brief description it sounds much better than mine, which forces me to go into the app, wait for a prompt, and then confirm that I took the medication. Thanks!

I use Medisafe, and interact through notifications, its widget, and watch notification. It gets the job done.

Good luck.

I actually prefer the “emulation” of 3D Touch my entry-level iPad has: the long touch. Just tap and hold for maybe a quarter second. It feels snappier to me than mashing my iPhone screen.

I suspect Apple may go that way, but, for example, long press and 3D Touch on a folder in springboard do different things, both useful.

That’s long press and even longer press on my iPad.

That only works on the 2 or 3 buttons that are hard-coded to support it and doesn't work in the general case (it can't work in the general case because it's literally just a long press, which already does other things).

Personally, pushing on the flashlight or camera buttons with 3D touch actually feels really satisfying, because it really does feel like I'm clicking a button even though I'm just pushing on my screen.

>I agree discovery of 3D interactions is terrible -- essentially nonexistent -- which does justify the epithet "useless" to some degree.

I've had iPhones for work for years and I'm just learning about this functionality today from reading this thread.

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