Instagram just announced that it’s making an Android version and the application is already available on Google Play Store for free. Since its launch in 2010, the app has been an iOS exclusive, and today after years of waiting, it’s finally up as a free public download.
Instagram was launched by co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. 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.
Instagram announced during the annual South by Southwest conference that its Android app would be better than Instagram for the iPhone in a number of ways, and now Android users can find out exactly how the new build stacks up.
What took the startup so long to bring what’s clearly an extremely popular app to Android? “I don’t think it took us so long. We just had priorities. Had we tried to be both on Android and iPhone at the same time, it would’ve been tough to innovate in the way that we have,” co-founder Kevin Systrom said on the launching.
The app features the same array of hipster-friendly filters, which helped to make the app a gigantic success with over 30 million users on the iPhone and the iPod touch.
Instagram will output a maximum resolution of 2048×2048, limited by the manufacturer’s camera and available application memory.
However, features like Tilt Shift / Blur, Share to Flickr, Share from Feed and Live Preview haven’t been included in the first version of the application.
The app, which has been responsible for over a billion photos uploads at a rate of five million a day, is a free download for any handset running Android 2.2 and above. It is not, however, compatible with tablets at this time.
Instagram for Android is available for download in every country and is translated into English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish.
On the day of launch there were over 430k people who signed up on the waiting list.
