Apple rolled out the iOS 15 update this September to the general public and users with supported iPhones will be able to upgrade to this significant update. I recently published an article on my top features of the iOS 15 update. That notwithstanding, there are other features that need fixing, including the annoying haptic touch tick sound.
Apple’s Taptic Engine used in the iPhone is top notch and way ahead of the haptics found in other Android phones such as Samsung and Pixel. Though there has been lots of improvement in Samsung’s haptics, it’s still no where near the iPhone’s Taptic Engine. When you enable haptic system on the iPhone, you get an awesome haptic feedback whenever you 3D touch to preview links and other UI interactions. The iOS 15 update messed this up by including a frustratingly noisy tick sound to the haptic system. When you unlock your device with Face ID or when you 3D touch or preview links, you get a haptic feedback together with this annoying tick sound. Its more like a beep sound used in the hand held old tetris consoles.
To add insult to injury, switching the silent/ring slider does not disable this beep-like noise. The only way to disable the beep sound is to disable system haptics entirely. To disable system haptics;
- Head to Settings
- Tap on Sound and Haptics
- Scroll to the bottom of the screen and disable System Haptics
Haptic feedback in stock keyboard would have been cool
Most Android phones that have below par vibration motors include a haptic feedback in their stock keyboard. Most of these devices including Samsung have been able to optimize their haptics making it awesome to touch. Apple for some reason, decided not to include haptics for their stock keyboard. There a number of third party keyboards on the App Store with haptics but I switched to the iPhone stock keyboard as no other keyboard on the App Store quite compares with the iPhone’s stock keyboard. Believe me I tried all of them.
One may argue that haptic feedback on the iPhone keyboard may be a battery hog, thereby draining the iPhone’s battery, but I never saw a change in battery life during my long trials of third party keyboard with haptics. Perhaps a toggle in Settings to enable or disable keyboard haptics would have been awesome.
Notifications
Though notifications got improved on the iPhone, previewing them on the Lock Screen is a bit ‘messy.’ Text appear very small when previewed and sometimes 3D touching on notifications require two tries to work.
Still no T9 dialing on the iPhone
T9 dialing is a form of predictive dialing which shows or predicts contacts on your phone as soon as you start typing numbers on your phone dialer. This is the best way to call up contacts on your phone. This is present in most devices including some feature phones but it still missing on the iPhone.
You still have to dial numbers in full to show up the contact.
Apple needs to fix these issues in the next minor bug update especially the annoying beep sound in system haptics. I sent a bug report to Apple on some of these issues at https://www.apple.com/feedback/. You can also do same if you have same annoying experience with the iOS 15 update and perhaps too many reports might cause Apple to respond and fix these issues.
