The mobile internet world was caught by surprise by an announcement from the creators of Instagram, an extremely popular photo sharing app for iPhone.
The news comes as a pleasant surprise to Android users, as there were no official announcements made regarding the app’s release date. Photo filter and sharing-service Instagram, has officially released its Android version onto Google’s Play Store early this April 2012. Users of Android can now apply retro hipster filters to their pictures and share these images to various social networks.
The much-anticipated photo and sharing service had been an iOS exclusive since its debut way back in 2010, but the company has been teasing hundreds of millions of Android users with the release for months. Instagram allows users to capture photos and edit them using a number of filters that give images a unique retro look. Pictures can then be shared with other Instagram users, and also shared on Twitter, Facebook or via email.
In terms of functionality, the Android application itself is identical to its Apple iOS cousin, featuring simple flash controls and a camera-switch button to alternate between front-facing and rear-facing cameras with a single tap. Unfortunately, the application still lacks spot-focusing, cropping and zooming after a picture has already been taken.
The app also miss a few details such Tilt Shift/Blue effects, Share from Feed, Live Preview and Share to Flickr. But it is their wish to roll out the update that will bridge the difference between both operating systems and provide a consistent usage between iOS and Android. On Android’s version of Instagram, there will be nothing lacking after the first update when compared with the app's iOS counterpart.
Android’s Instagram will be usable for phones on Android 2.2 or above and it will be able to support pictures with a resolution of up to 2048×2048, limited by each devices hardware capability and available memory. The application will support English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish languages.
Instagram says that nearly half a million people pre-registered for the Android version of the app. Instagram asks new users to register for an account. Users can import friends from Facebook, Twitter and their Google contacts who use Instagram to their account automatically.
On Android, Instagram looks right at home, partly due to the new not-so-iOSish look of the app.
While there have certainly been multiple Instagram-like services available for Android for quite some time now, Instagram will quickly become the photo service of choice for many Android users. It has easily been one of the most hotly-anticipated Android apps to date, and it would not be a stretch to see the service double in number over the next several weeks.
A few hours after the launch, Instagram released version 1.01 to anticipate application crash on several Android devices.