The iPhone SE Has This One Rather Odd Limitation (And Apparently It’s Not a Bug)

There’s a lot to like about Apple’s new 2020 iPhone SE, which comes in as a very respectable budget-friendly option for those looking for an iPhone with current specs that won’t empty their wallets, but it appears that despite following in lockstep with the iPhone 11 models, the iPhone SE has shown one rather inexplicable difference in the user experience.

The iPhone SE has the same A13 chip as the iPhone 11 and the iPhone 11 Pro, it runs the exact same version of iOS 13.4, and it even managed to perform some pretty remarkable photography tricks, despite the single-lens camera, and even includes the same modernized Camera app as its more expensive siblings. So you’d think in software terms it would function in every way like an iPhone 11, or at least like the iPhone 8 that came before it, right?

Well, apparently not.

Customers who have purchased the new 2020 iPhone SE have been surprised to discover that the ability to long-press on a notification in the lock screen Notification Center does not bring up the rich notification options as it does on pretty much every other iPhone model for the past few years.

To be fair, this was originally a function of the 3D Touch technology that Apple debuted with the iPhone 6s back in 2015, although the rich notification feature itself didn’t arrive until iOS 10 a couple of years later, and of course the iPhone SE no longer includes 3D Touch like its predecessor, the iPhone 8 did.

However, neither do the iPhone 11 or the iPhone 11 Pro. Apple axed 3D Touch last year in favour of a new Haptic Touch feature in iOS 13 that used long presses instead of harder presses to accomplish most of the same functions. The feature was actually first introduced in a more lightweight form in iOS 12 for the sake of the iPhone XR, which was actually the first modern iPhone to eliminate 3D Touch.

To be fair, the iPhone XR also lacked support for Haptic Touch rich notifications when it first came out as well, which some people found odd, but then Apple later added it in an iOS 12.1.1 update. This has led people to assume that the iPhone SE will follow a similar path, although after Apple already “fixed” the issue on the iPhone XR it really seems odd that the iPhone SE wouldn’t have this capability right out of the gate, and in fact some reputable sources are suggesting that it’s actually working as designed.

Not a Bug?

Although he doesn’t cite any sources for his conclusions, Matthew Panzarino, Editor-in-Chief of TechCrunch, offered up the announced that this is not a bug, but rather that it’s working the way Apple intended it.

Panzarino adds that he hasn’t been able to find out whether there’s any technical reason why this shouldn’t be supported, but suggests that he’s been told it’s “working as intended” currently. Again, however, he doesn’t share exactly how he knows this. Other comments have cited Apple Support as telling them that it was left out “Because the SE is considered a budget friendly model” but this doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense either, as it results in an inconsistent user experience.

Others have speculated that this may have been an oversight on Apple’s part when they “ported” the iPhone 8 firmware to the iPhone SE; since the earlier model offered 3D Touch, it’s possible that the Haptic Touch wasn’t properly enabled in the absence of the 3D Touch hardware. However, Haptic Touch seems to work in many other ways on the iPhone SE — it’s just the lock screen notifications where it’s not supported.

We’re scratching our collective heads why Apple would choose to deliberately leave this feature out, however, and since the whole thing seems like a repeat of the iPhone XR, it’s entirely possible that the feature may still be coming down the road, as it did for the earlier model. The fact that even Apple’s iPads and seventh-generation iPod touch support long presses on notifications (although without haptic feedback, meaning they’re not technically “Haptic Touch” by definition) makes it even more unusual that the iPhone SE would deliberately be the only iOS 13 device that doesn’t support this feature.

Fortunately, however, Haptic Touch appears to work everywhere else, and although the issue is definitely disappointing for anybody who upgraded from an iPhone 8, not all is lost, however. You can still access expanded rich notifications on the iPhone SE, but you won’t be able to long press to do so like you can on other devices. Instead, you’ll need to swipe right to left on a notification and tap the “View” button that appears.