The first smartphone to feature a screen sensitive to force and pressure was the iPhone 6S. Apple calls this technology Force Touch (or 3D Touch on the 6S), and it will likely continue to appear in future products, but it probably won't remain exclusive. In fact, a team at the University of Michigan has found a way to simulate force and pressure detection using two things every smartphone already has: a speaker and a microphone. The result: an app called ForcePhone.
A screen or touchpad that can recognize different levels of force gives users greater flexibility when issuing commands. While it certainly requires a little practice, control over the device changes forever once you master that extra layer. In its advertising, Apple uses the term 3D Touch when describing the ability of the iPhone 6S (and the 6S Plus, of course) to detect force and pressure. In essence, 3D Touch is the heir to the Force Touch introduced on the Apple Watch, the Retina MacBooks, and the Magic Trackpad 2. So far, it seems like the kind of function only hardware can deliver with precision... but what if a program could do something similar?
How ForcePhone works
Let's make room for ForcePhone, a development from the University of Michigan. This app doesn't just reproduce the sensitivity to force and pressure on the screen; it extends it to the rest of the phone, so that slightly squeezing the case could be recognized as a command. What exactly does ForcePhone do? The app takes control of the speaker and the microphone. The speaker emits a sound at 18 kHz, high enough that most people cannot hear it, but the microphone has no such problem. When you press on the screen or the case, the tone changes, and that variation is all that's needed to assign actions. In short, ForcePhone is a sonar.
In theory, one could dial an emergency number by pressing the phone with a special pattern without even taking it out of a pocket. The software is still in development, and its first public demo will be during the final days of June. ForcePhone might not outperform dedicated hardware in terms of speed and precision, but if it arrives on the market as an app, I imagine many users will be interested.
