The iPhone SE can’t expand lock screen notifications with Haptic Touch
A strange omissio
It’s emerged that the new iPhone SE, which started shipping last Friday, has a curious feature missing: unlike every other modern iPhone, you’re unable to bring up rich content on the lock screen or notification shade with a “Haptic Touch” long press. MacRumors noted the omission, and The Verge has confirmed it on a device of our own.
You can still see the rich content — like larger images, or buttons for things like archiving emails without opening the app — by swiping lock-screen notifications to the left and tapping “View,” so it’s not like the functionality has gone away completely. Haptic Touch also still works on notifications that come in at the top of the screen with the phone unlocked
The inconsistent behavior is certainly an unusual point of differentiation from other iPhones, not to mention an inconvenient one if you were used to the Haptic Touch method. It seems unlikely that there’s any technical reason, but TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino reports that the tweak is not a bug and is “working as intended.”
Haptic Touch long presses or 3D Touch hard presses have been a way to expand iPhone notifications ever since the iPhone 6S came out in 2015. The iPhone SE’s predecessor, the iPhone 8, had 3D Touch on board, but no currently shipping iPhone includes that feature; it’s a little surprising that the iPhone SE’s Haptic Touch works differently than the rest of the lineup.