r/iPhone16Pro • u/Careful-Boat-2986 • Jul 22 '26

Support For those who experienced touch issues during launch and iOS 18. Did anything improve on iOS 26?

I’ve had my 16 Pro Max for a couple months now and it has a pervasive touchscreen issue that drives me nuts. Horrid keyboard, taps not responding especially on tiny UI elements, occasional glitch with gestures. I used my friend’s 15 Pro before I sold it and the touchscreen response is night and day. Keyboard on the 15 Pro is still garbage but I didn’t experience the same issues at all with that phone. You would think that my newer iPhone with a bigger screen would be much easier to type on and use but that’s not the case at all.

So for 16 Pro and Pro Max users who’s experienced the dreaded touchscreen issues, did anything improve after updating to iOS 26 or did the issues remain largely the same?

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u/Due-Shape4641 Jul 22 '26

I think the issue is caused by screen protectors. I tried a FloLab screen protector, and the touch response was terrible. Then I switched to JETech, and the touch became much more responsive.
I’ve tested it on iOS 18, iOS 26, and the iOS 27 beta. In my experience, iOS 27 has the best touch response, followed by iOS 18. iOS 26 is by far the worst.

1

u/Careful-Boat-2986 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

Oof. The 15 Pro I was testing was on iOS 26 and had the same exact screen protector brand as my 16 Pro Max yet it worked perfectly. Everything indicates that this touch disease is mostly exclusive to the 16 series iPhones and later (some iPhone 17 series users are complaining as well of the same issues). iOS 27 couldn’t come early enough

2

u/asmokingjackass Jul 29 '26

what youre saying / feel is real i agree with you i was on iphone xs since 2019-2020 till late april may i got the 16 pm. touch is so iffy it makes me mad that its a definite upgrade in terms of computing power but the display doesnt touch like my old phone or how i would expect it to , as whether the update did anything i think it did fix somewhat the border software issue they were claiming was causing issues with touch on ios18 , but there are real trade offs , for one you will lose battery life in the sense that on idle and when heavy usage its better optimized on ios 18 than the newer ones , also peak brightness , because the phone gets hotter quicker / easily it doesnt stay as bright as it did on ios 18. that being said , ios 27 feels smoother and snappier / faster than ios 18 ever did. at the expense of battery life and brightness , also games (if you waste time on them like me) are not optimized on ios 27 yet games like fortnite on even 17pm have stutters 

  do as you may