5 Older iPhone Features Users Want Back

Apple continues to iterate on the iPhone, its flagship smartphone that Steve Jobs introduced in 2007 at the Macworld Conference and Expo during his keynote speech. As we embrace new generations of iPhone and upgrades to iOS, the iPhone operating system, we have to say goodbye to some features. Sometimes Apple includes features that people love, like Face ID, AirDrop, Math Notes, FaceTime, Back Tap, and seamless integration with other Apple products like Macs and Apple Watches. Other times, Apple removes features that some people can’t live without, like 3D Touch, Touch ID, the headphone jack, and the ability to turn off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi from the Control Center.

As phones have gotten smaller, technology has improved, and digital security standards have changed, among other things, Apple has had to make tough decisions about what to include. Maybe one day Apple will bring some of these back, like it did with battery percentage when it removed it and received a ton of backlash.

In many forums asking people what iPhone features they miss most, 3D Touch is usually mentioned. This short-lived feature was introduced with the iPhone 6s in 2015 and was removed with the iPhone XR in 2018. 3D Touch allowed pressure-sensitive gestures. For example, you can press hard on an email, photo, or link to see a preview. For some app icons, such as Netflix and Google Chrome, pressing hard on them would reveal a submenu with more actions. One Reddit commenter said they missed 3D Touch because it allowed them to aim and shoot without lifting a finger in first-person shooter (FPS) games.

Removing 3D Touch meant Apple was removing hardware that enabled pressure-sensitive presses. It’s probably gone for good. It’s likely that Apple removed it because it wasn’t a popular feature. In its place you have Haptic Touch, a software solution that uses long presses followed by vibration feedback for gestures. This gives you something similar to 3D Touch while being easier to use and implement.

However, for this particular FPS example, this wouldn’t work because some games implemented this feature specifically for 3D Touch. People also preferred 3D Touch because it was faster than Haptic Touch. Maybe if more people used it, Apple would have kept it.

When the iPhone had a Home button, it also had one of the best biometric security features on the market: Touch ID. All you had to do was register your fingerprint in Settings and you could unlock iPhone, authenticate logins or authorize payments quickly, easily and securely. All you had to do was place your finger on the Home button, where the fingerprint scanner is, to use Touch ID. It wasn’t perfect, however, as it was a pain to use when fingers were wet or covered in gloves. When edge-to-edge displays became a reality, the dramatic redesign of the iPhone X completely removed Touch ID and introduced Face ID.

Face ID lets you do pretty much everything you did with Touch ID. The front camera scans your face when you look at it and authenticates you to access locked content. This is also not any facial scanning technology. The iPhone’s TrueDepth camera creates an in-depth 3D scan of your face, enabling a safer and more convenient means of authentication that works in various scenarios and cannot be easily fooled.

Many users love Face ID and have ditched Touch ID. Others lament the removal of Touch ID because it was more reliable. Additionally, not everyone wants to provide facial scans of themselves. Fortunately, passcodes still exist, but they are much slower and can be guessed (which is not a problem for biometrics).

Before the iPhone 7, iPhones included a 3.5mm headphone jack for inserting all sorts of wired headphones and earphones. With their removal, Apple moved toward a wireless future, introducing AirPods alongside the iPhone 7. But as we’ve learned, the quality of Bluetooth audio can’t match the quality provided by wired audio. This is something the average person won’t notice, but audiophiles know it all too well, which is why they prefer wired headphones over wireless ones.

One of the reasons Apple said it removed the headphone jack is because it wanted to free up more space inside the iPhone. Even though the connector looked small on the outside, it took up a lot of valuable internal space, which could be used for other features. Additionally, removing the plug also means that the iPhone has become more water resistant, which is extremely positive.

People can still use headphones and wired earphones on iPhone using a Lightning to 3.5mm adapter on iPhone 14 and earlier or a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter on iPhone 15 and later. However, this removes the transparency of the built-in audio jack, creating friction when it comes to scenarios like purchasing adapters (these can be easy to lose), not being able to charge the iPhone while using wired headphones and earbuds, and the need to charge wireless listening devices.

The Control Center has also undergone major changes over the years. It used to be that you could turn off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi completely from the Control Center by simply tapping the icons. However, everything changed with the introduction of iOS 11. The icons were still there, but tapping them only disconnected the phone from devices and networks instead of turning them off. iPhone will then automatically turn them back on at 5 a.m. local time or when you restart your device. Wi-Fi will also be turned back on when you move to another location.

There are people who don’t want to keep Bluetooth on all the time. This is a security risk that can trick people into allowing unknown connection requests and allow hackers to see which devices the iPhone has recently paired with. To turn Bluetooth off completely, users need to go to Settings > Bluetooth and turn it off. For Wi-Fi, they need to go to Settings > Wi-Fi and do the same. This is less practical to the point that some people simply prefer to keep these settings.

With the release of iTunes 12.7 in September 2017, Apple removed the ability to organize apps in this popular media player and device manager. Before that, you could connect your iPhone to iTunes and organize apps on your iPhone’s pages on the Home screen using the “Apps” tab. People found this easier because all of the iPhone’s pages were visible on this screen, allowing them to quickly click and drag apps between them. Doing this on the iPhone is clunky and tedious if there are a lot of apps since you have to drag the app to different pages before placing it where you want it.

Deleting apps was also much faster. You can simply click the “X” button in the upper left corner of the app icons you want to remove, then click “Sync” to remove them all at once. Now you have to do it one by one, even in Edit mode.

Apple even abandoned iTunes altogether, removing it completely from macOS when Catalina was released in 2019. What iTunes could do was split it into separate built-in apps, including Apple Music for managing the music library and Finder for managing devices. This is an indicator that this feature will never return. iTunes is still available on Windows, but Apple encourages users to migrate to standalone apps, with Apple devices being the gold standard for device management.