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iOS 9 to possibly be predicting your touches before you even tap the screen

By Preslav Kateliev

Updated: Jun 12, 2015, 3:47 AM

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iOS 9 to possibly be predicting your touches before you even tap the screen

With the iOS 9 beta out and developer information being released, clue-hunters are looking for anything and everything, which may suggest what we may be in the iPhone's foreseeable future. Keen eyes have noticed an interesting line in the iOS Developer Diary, listed as a new item for the UIKit Framework. This line states:

Enhancements to touch events, such as the ability to get access to intermediate touches that may have occurred since the last refresh of the display and touch prediction.

Touch prediction? Sounds outlandish, for sure, but speculators suggest that iOS 9 will have the ability to guess where the user might tap next, pre-loading any relevant processes and reducing the delay in actually executing the action. Now, iOS is pretty snappy as is, indeed, but we'd guess that such an enhancement would work in such moments when the “Back” button takes a while to actually work (usually, right after you've entered a submenu).

As to how the software will “guess” where you are going to touch, we've no clue. An educated guess would be that each “hot spot” (touchable area that houses an often-used function) would be treated as a “predicted touch location”. Another variant may be analyzing and learning from user behavior.

Apple to reduce touchlatency is predicting where users will move their fingers and arecalling it "touch prediction."

That'sinsane.
— Adam Debreczeni (@heyadam) June9, 2015

Source: iOS Developer Diary via BusinessInsider

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Preslav, a member of the PhoneArena team since 2014, is a mobile technology enthusiast with a penchant for integrating tech into his hobbies and work. Whether it's writing articles on an iPad Pro, recording band rehearsals with multiple phones, or exploring the potential of mobile gaming through services like GeForce Now and Steam Link, Preslav's approach is hands-on and innovative. His balanced perspective allows him to appreciate both Android and iOS ecosystems, focusing on performance, camera quality, and user experience over brand loyalty.

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