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Is 3D Touch the only, or even the best way of implementing a cursor?

Why wouldn’t a Long press, for example, not work for that? Or just a dedicated button to switch to a cursor?

A dedicated button wouldn’t be slightly more inconvenient but would be ridiculously more discoverable and make it available for people who have phones older than the 3D Touch supported ones.

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A long press wouldn’t suffice, since you’d still need the second gesture (more pressure with the 3D Touch implementation) to switch from moving around a cursor to select mode (ie. moving around the second cursor). Not claiming 3D Touch is the only way it could be done, but a long press seems like it could only support a subset of apples cursor mode.

I had an HTC Incredible that had a little touch nipple thing at the bottom-middle of the screen. It functioned like a Thinkpad nub and was pressable for a click. So far that is the best text selection method I have seen on a cell phone.

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