Instagram now available for Android

[USZA]

After a long wait, Instagram for Android has arrived. The app is now available for free download from Google Play.

The mobile photo-sharing application allows users to capture images, add filters and share across social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Instagram gained notoriety as an exclusively iOS app, and its developers attributed much of its success to the popularity of the iPhone 4S and its 8MP camera, and Apple's app of the year award which it received in 2011.
Since becoming available yesterday, the Instagram for Android app already had almost 38 500 downloads at the time of writing.

In a statement announcing the new app, Instagram says: “We've been working tirelessly to make this new Android app a first-class mobile photo-sharing experience. We've been meticulous about translating the Instagram experience to the Android platform.

“The Android app offers an extremely familiar Instagram experience when compared to the iOS app. You'll find all the same exact filters and community as our iOS version.”

While the app maintains the same interface and basic features, it has been noted that the Android version lacks some of the iOS version's editing options, such as tilt shift. Instagram says such features will be added to later versions. The new app does, however, feature an “Advanced Camera” option that automatically resizes images, which the iOS version does not have.

According to Instagram, the release of the Android app is a big step for the Instagram community as a whole. Leading up to the Android release of the app, Instagram opened a sign-up page for Android users online. According to statistics from Instagram, it had over 430 000 people on its Android waiting list.

The app currently has 30 million registered users, over a billion photos uploaded with an average of five million uploads a day. Instagram also says its photo sharing network generates 575 likes, and 81 comments, per second.

Source

. . . and the iFans isn't liking it one bit, judging from comments on various tech sites.

iPhone users disgusted by Android Instagram

 

[OMB]

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/418914-Instagram-popular-among-Android-users

 

[Vulk]

Source

. . . and the iFans isn't liking it one bit, judging from comments on various tech sites.

iPhone users disgusted by Android Instagram

I downloaded Instagram last night, and I'm loving it. Really glad it's finally available on Android.

It's pretty ridiculous how upset iOS users are getting at the loss of Instagram exclusivity. Perhaps because it was one of the few big bragging points that iOS still had to itself? I honestly can't think of any other iOS app, aside from Flipboard, that I'm missing on Android.

That said, all the gratuitous Instagram-bashing by Android fans is also pretty absurd. It's weird how emotionally charged people get over this app.

 

[CranialBlaze]

I downloaded Instagram last night, and I'm loving it. Really glad it's finally available on Android.

It's pretty ridiculous how upset iOS users are getting at the loss of Instagram exclusivity. Perhaps because it was one of the few big bragging points that iOS still had to itself? I honestly can't think of any other iOS app, aside from Flipboard, that I'm missing on Android.

That said, all the gratuitous Instagram-bashing by Android fans is also pretty absurd. It's weird how emotionally charged people get over this app.

You notice they almost all woman complaining, they prolly all children still too. To think, most androids have better cameras anyway and they worried about it looking shoddy.
IMO Instagram will prolly end up looking better now that quality has joined the mix.

 

[DominionZA]

Poor iOS Instagram users better prepare to get pushed into the minority. Let them moan

 

[Rosaudio]

Way too mainstream now.

 

[Elimentals]

OMW what a crap app. No quick exit, no menu options and the design reeks of iOS UI.

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk 2 Beta-5

 

[Vulk]

Out of curiosity, are there any other camera apps that have an exit button?

 

[Elimentals]

Out of curiosity, are there any other camera apps that have an exit button?

Camera apps don't need it as you normally 3 levels at most away from exiting.

Instagram on the other hand is a social app, and it remembers every step you took since you opened the app so it could take up to 50+ presses of the back key to finally exit.

 

[Vulk]

Well... or you could just press the home button.

 

[floydthebarber71]

Not impressed with Instagram. I tried Camera360, that's quite leka.

 

[Vulk]

On the subject of exit buttons:

I have a crapton of Android apps installed, and I don't think I have a single one that uses an exit button. The last app that I remember having one was Dolphin Mini, which I have since ditched for Google Chrome and never looked back. And I don't mind: quite frankly, I think exit buttons are lame. The whole point of Android is that it uses seamless multitasking, without the user ever having to worry about killing tasks.

On the subject of Instagram:

I agree with Elimentals that the user interface of Instagram turns me off a bit. I don't find it to be all that iPhone-ish - the design isn't actively annoying to me in the same way that I find something like Viber annoying. But it also doesn't feel at all Android-ish. It feels more like some weird design paradigm that Instagram has created for itself, that exists in a kind-of halfway point between Android and iOS. I just wish they would have implemented a few more Android-style touches; for example, allowing you to switch between grid and list view using ICS-style swipeable tabs.

Despite these criticisms, I have to reiterate that I think Instagram is a fantastic app. Prior to having it on Android, it was one of the things that made me most jealous of my iPhone-using friends, because the photos they took with it just looked so damn cool. And as a result, I expected the filters to be the main drawcard. And indeed, the filters are very good. (I've tried pretty much everything else out there: Retro Camera, Camera 360, Camera Zoom FX, Lightbox, Vignette, the stock photo editing app on ICS, etc. With the possible exception of Magic Hour, Instagram usually seems to produce nicer results, even if it isn't as flexible.)

However, since I started using Instagram, I realised that there's something even better than the filters: it finally gives me something to actually do with photographs.

I mean, I''ve got this nice camera on my phone. I periodically take pictures with, which then get uploaded to my Dropbox. But I'm not actually doing anything with those pictures. I don't upload them to Facebook because I hate Facebook; I could put them on Picasa or Flickr but I don't because nobody I know uses those services so it doesn't really like there's any point. But now I finally have something to do with my pictures - put them on Instagram. They become part of my feed, and if my friends like them they can comment, otherwise they just ignore them. It incentivises its users to upload smaller quantities of good photos, unlike Facebook which encourages its users to upload entire galleries. And it encourages users to take photographs of interesting things, rather than just themselves getting drunk at a bar or whatever. All in all, I really like it.

 

[CranialBlaze]

Camera apps don't need it as you normally 3 levels at most away from exiting.

Instagram on the other hand is a social app, and it remembers every step you took since you opened the app so it could take up to 50+ presses of the back key to finally exit.

Its an android, for 99% of apps the home and repeated presses of the back button are the same thing, unless it has an actual exit button like only a handful of apps (mostly games), pressing back 50 times does not unload it from memory.

Droids were designed for multitasking and apps are automatically unloaded from memory when needed based on usage frequency, the less often its used the sooner its unloaded to allow newly launched apps to load into memory.

Your complaint over an exit option was invalidated the day you purchased an android. The reason its so fast it in great part to linux memory management, the fact of storing apps in memory to speed up access times and monitoring the usage of these apps to establish a usage patern and assign levels of importance to the apps so when a new apps requires more memory than what is freely available it knows in which order to unload items while still maintaining speed for that which you use most often.

Google and many linus/droid users recomend agains exit buttons and task killers, why do you think you see so few apps without them, its not developer lazyness or studity, its an understanding of how the os works and the lack of need for such a function. Its been months since i personally have used any for of task killing and never see my phone slow down. The benefit in a task killer is a placebo effect for those who actually have little to no understanding for what they are using, ie windows users. Yes I am one too, but I also know how to use google and like understanding the pros and cons behind doing something not natively supported by the device.

Its only logical that they leave out what the everday user percieves as an essentail ability for a reason. Nobody simply forgets an exit button for 4 major versions of an os without a reason.

Beamed from my Nexus S running ICS using Tapatalk

 

[Vulk]

I have found the inevitable flamewars on Instagram to be somewhat lulzy though:

 

[azbob]

Urgh instagram. I hate it. Makes people think that it turns their crappy photos into art.

 

[Elimentals]

Its an android, for 99% of apps the home and repeated presses of the back button are the same thing, unless it has an actual exit button like only a handful of apps, pressing back 50 times does not unload it from memory.

Droids were designed for multitasking and apps are automatically unloaded from memory when needed based on usage frequency, the less often its used the sooner its unloaded to allow newly launched apps to load into memory.

Your complaint over an exit option was invalidated the day you purchased an android.

Beamed from my Nexus S running ICS using Tapatalk

Attempt to troll failed.... horribly, I know very well how Android memory management work, I am not a noob in fact I am a developer.

Here is a test for you:
Go into instagram, nivagate the tabs and then press the back button till you exit, now open it again. You will find it opens as the 1st time.
Vs
Repeat the navigation and then press home. after you exit open the app again, it will open on the exact tab you left it at.

I don't want to get into details but if you truly are interested go read up on startActivity and startActivityForResult over here

Back button behavior
Android users rely on the back button on their navigation. Usually apps don't provide, and neither should they, a back button in the UI unlike their iOS counterparts.

Android Activity API provides developers a way to hook into back button functionality and even overwrite it. This power should be used with great care. Making back button behave in unexpected ways can easily destroy your application's user experience.

What back button does, technically

From technical point of view the back button manipulates the app's Activity stack. Pressing back calls finish on the active activity and removes it from the stack. If the app only has one activity or the current activity is the only one in the stack (ie. user has closed all the other ones) back button will close the application.

Behavior after pressing back or pressing home look very similar to the user. However, from technical point of view they are very different. Back will terminate the app but home will move the app to background.

That is why good coders always add:

    private Toast toast;
    private long lastBackPressTime = 0;


    @Override
    public void onBackPressed() {
      if (this.lastBackPressTime < System.currentTimeMillis() - 4000) {
        toast = Toast.makeText(this, "[B]Press back again to close this app[/B]", 4000);
        toast.show();
        this.lastBackPressTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
      } else {
        if (toast != null) {
        toast.cancel();
      }
      super.onBackPressed();
     }
    }

 

[CranialBlaze]

Attempt to troll failed.... horribly, I know very well how Android memory management work, I am not a noob in fact I am a developer.

Here is a test for you:
Go into instagram, nivagate the tabs and then press the back button till you exit, now open it again. You will find it opens as the 1st time.
Vs
Repeat the navigation and then press home. after you exit open the app again, it will open on the exact tab you left it at.

I don't want to get into details but if you truly are interested go read up on startActivity and startActivityForResult over here



That is why good coders always add:

    private Toast toast;
    private long lastBackPressTime = 0;


    @Override
    public void onBackPressed() {
      if (this.lastBackPressTime < System.currentTimeMillis() - 4000) {
        toast = Toast.makeText(this, "[B]Press back again to close this app[/B]", 4000);
        toast.show();
        this.lastBackPressTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
      } else {
        if (toast != null) {
        toast.cancel();
      }
      super.onBackPressed();
     }
    }

Very happy for your incorrect information, you should actually take a look at your background processes once you have pressed the back button repeatedly. They loaded into background processing, still taking up memory, less than if they were active but they are still there and have not truly been exited as you so claim.

Unless you actually "kill" a task with a task killer or the app has an actual exit button that unloads it completely from memory you task will still be running in the background waiting for you to launch it again, pressing the back button simply means it loads on the first page instead of your last used page.

You can install rom toolbox if you have no other apps that can show whats actively in device memory, it will tell you whats running, were its running and how much memory it is taking up.

 

[Elimentals]

The way I would have coded it is : Only have 1 main and 1 child activity, that way you will never need an exit button/option.

So if you press any button in the app it should call its 1st child activity, if you then press on another it should simply close that child using "finish()" call and then call the next one as the child, so you never more than 3 presses away from exiting.

Simple yet effective and the way most Apps work.

 

[Elimentals]

Very happy for your incorrect information, you should actually take a look at your background processes once you have pressed the back button repeatedly. They loaded into background processing, still taking up memory, less than if they were active but they are still there and have not truly been exited as you so claim.

Unless you actually "kill" a task with a task killer or the app has an actual exit button that unloads it completely from memory you task will still be running in the background waiting for you to launch it again, pressing the back button simply means it loads on the first page instead of your last used page.

You can install rom toolbox if you have no other apps that can show whats actively in device memory, it will tell you whats running, were its running and how much memory it is taking up.

OMW.... you don't get it do you?

I could not give a rats ass about Memory.... its CPU and Data resources that does not get closed. ala onPause vs onStop/finish() calls.

Anyway wasted enough time with someone that clearly did not even look at the activity link I gave above.... or think the program is perfect.

Pressing home to go out cause

Pressing back till you are out cause

 

[bxm]

Ok then...

How about we share our usernames so that we can start following each other. I'll start - my username is: bxm77

Also, if you don't like Instagram, try Streamzoo. At the moment I actually prefer it to Instagram.

Also see this Lifehacker article: http://lifehacker.com/5899690/dont-...here-are-five-better-alternatives-for-android