So I dug an iPhone 6s out of the tech graveyard, and it turns out this relic has two superpowers modern flagships don’t: actual 3D Touch and a headphone jack. Naturally, I’m now convinced it’s the perfect pressure-sensitive smart home remote/MIDI pad/“dumb-smartphone” in 2025. Because nothing screams innovation like squeezing a 9-year-old phone until your lights dim.
Has anyone seriously tried turning a 6s into a pressure-sensitive universal remote or music controller? I’m thinking a few angles here:
- 3D Touch as an analog input: Can iOS 15 Safari still expose force values in web apps? In theory TouchEvent.force goes from 0 to 1 on 3D Touch devices. Could a PWA send that to Home Assistant or a local server to control light brightness/volume/etc. by pressing harder?
- Shortcuts bridge: Any trick to funnel pressure data into Shortcuts automations? Scriptable/Pushcut/webhooks hackery welcome. Bonus points if it works offline on a LAN.
- BLE MIDI controller: Anyone used a 6s as a pressure-sensitive BLE-MIDI pad with apps like AUM/MidiFire/Mozaic/GeoShred and then broadcast to a Mac/iPad/synth? Latency/jitter numbers would be amazing. “Feels good” is a vibe, but I like graphs.
- Headphone jack hijinks: Viable to use TRRS mic input as a footswitch or simple trigger (without exotic hardware) for hands-free control? Or should I accept that the jack is just for lossless pretenders and late-night podcasts?
- Carrier reality check: As a backup phone, is VoLTE on a 6s still being provisioned anywhere sane in 2025? Any success with eSIM-to-SIM adapters like eSIM.me, or is that a beautiful lie?
- Battery/brawn: Any proven settings for keeping temps/battery wear under control while acting as a permanent remote? (Low Power Mode forever, LTE-only, brightness cap, old-man refresh rate tricks?) Also, any downside to feeding it modern 20W bricks vs classic 5W slowness?
- App support: What’s the current floor for must-have apps on iOS 15 (Home Assistant, MQTT clients, music apps)? Any notable PWAs that outperform abandoned App Store fossils?
- 3D Touch panel drift: If your force readings got weird with age, did a screen swap fix it, or is it just “vintage character” now?
If you’ve built anything in this zone, I’d love:
- Setup notes (apps, settings, networks, weird toggles buried five menus deep)
- Latency measurements or battery drain/hour
- Force-to-action mappings that actually feel natural (e.g., 0.2=on, 0.5=dim, 0.8=disco)
- “Do not do this” horror stories, preferably with the smell of toasted Taptic Engine
Convince me I’m either a genius or an archaeologist with commitment issues. Either way, let’s see if the 6s can retire as a pressure-sensitive Swiss Army brick instead of a drawer ornament.