Microsoft’s Canceled Lumia 935 Shown On Video With 3D Touch, Exploding Tiles

Back in 2014, Microsoft was working on a device called the Lumia 935, also known as McLaren, that supported 3D touch and exploding live tiles. Unfortunately for Windows Phone fans, the device never made its way to the market but thanks to a new video, posted below, we can what the company was working on before shutting down the project.

If you watch the video, you can see how hovering your finger over the display would allow you to preview content or ‘explode’ the Live tile to expose more information. It’s certainly a neat looking addition but until you use it every day, it’s hard to tell how well this functionality works and if it would truly improve the user experience or simply get in the way; not to mention this likely drives up the cost of the device too.

Seeing as the Lumia 950 does not have this feature, it’s possible we may not ever see a Windows phone supporting this functionality. Considering that Microsoft is pulling back on its ambitions with the Lumias and is instead focusing more on the desktop, tablet and HoloLens, this may be the best view of the 3D touch feature we ever see.

It’s still possible that the company could include this type of feature into the Surface brand of devices too but only time will tell if that will actually happen.

After seeing how the feature worked, I can’t help but wonder if the feature had a high error rate of accidental input from the user or if the company simply found that shipping a device with this functionality was only a novelty. Only those inside the company know why it was cancelled, it could also be simply a cost-cutting move too, but here’s to hoping we see the feature show up somewhere else, sometime soon.