Smartphones "should" be smart. And one of the main reasons that they can be smart is continuous internet connection.
With still many people having limited network connectivity or no data plan, every app installed shouldn't require internet connection to make itself at least "a bit smart", and that concerns Instagram as one of the fastest growing app.
At Facebook’s F8 conference, the photo-sharing app announced that it is adding an offline support for its Android app. This way, users can browse and create posts even without having an internet connection.
To do this, the users' mobile devices need to first download all of the contents Instagram needs to work offline. So while the devices are still connected to Wi-Fi or mobile data plan, it will download all the necessary things. After that, when internet connection is not available, users can still be able to view, comment on, like and save.
Users can also create posts and save drafts like they normally would. What's more, users can also see contents they've loaded previously, such as profiles they have visited and posts in the Explore tab.
All those activities are saved offline. And once users are back online, Instagram will synced those activities with what it has in its servers.
At the F8 conference, Instagram said that it has built support for most of its features so they can be used without internet access. Much of this functionalities are available on Android, the preferred mobile operating system that is widely available on budget phones and high-end devices.
Instagram sees this strategy necessary since it would certainly help it to grow in developing nations where internet connectivity is either too expensive or not yet widely available/stable. By having an offline mode, Instagram is following Facebook Lite which saw 200 million users in just a year being launched.
Instagram also has added a couple of new features that include grouping saved posts into Collections.