Apple reportedly sticking with controversial feature iPhone users labeled huge 'downgrade'

Apple is reportedly sticking with a controversial feature that many iPhone users have labeled as a huge ‘downgrade’.

This comes after the release of iOS 26 last year, which featured its new ‘Liquid Glass’ design.

The translucent material is said to ‘reflect and refract its surroundings, while dynamically transforming to help bring greater focus to content, delivering a new level of vitality across controls, navigation, app icons, widgets, and more’.

According to the company, the ‘new design takes advantage of Apple’s powerful advances in hardware, silicon, and graphics technologies’, with the new translucent material behaving like ‘glass in the real world’.

The new feature was introduced with iOS 26 (Cheng Xin/Getty Images)

Apple’s vice president of Human Interface Design at the time, Alan Dye, said: “At Apple, we’ve always believed in the deep integration of hardware and software that makes interacting with technology intuitive, beautiful, and delightful.”

He went on to add: “This is our broadest software design update ever. Meticulously crafted by rethinking the fundamental elements that make up our software, the new design features an entirely new material called Liquid Glass.

“It combines the optical qualities of glass with a fluidity only Apple can achieve, as it transforms depending on your content or context. It lays the foundation for new experiences in the future and, ultimately, it makes even the simplest of interactions more fun and magical.”

However, it seems like iPhone users weren’t too enthused about the new software, with many taking to social media to share their own thoughts on the matter.

Liquid Glass was a controversial addition to the iPhone (Apple)

At the time of its release, one user took to Reddit to describe the feature ‘absolutely a downgrade’.

Another said: “It feels like possibly the worst update to date. This direction just feels too clunky for me, everything is so big, the apps and the clock on the wallpaper look so 2007.”

A third person complained that they ‘miss the flatness already’ of previous models.

And a fourth added that it ‘feels like we have gone back in time’.

Criticism of the new feature hit an ultimate peak when Dye left for Meta.

Afterwards, some wondered if Apple would u-turn the design in favor of the older model.

But it appears that the tech giant is sticking to its guns as, according to reports, Liquid Glass will be a feature of the upcoming iOS 27.

However, not all hope is lost as apparently it will come with an option for users to turn down the effect.