So it finally happened. Instagram showed up in the Play Store today and I've had it installed since about 8am, which is roughly nine hours before I'm writing this. My thumb is tired.
I want to be annoyed about this because Ive spent the better part of two years politely pretending I didnt care that Instagram was iOS-only. Every time a friend posted some square photo of their lunch with a fake vignette on it Id think, sure, thats nice, I dont need that. I have a perfectly good camera app. I dont need filters to make my coffee look like it was shot on film in 1974. Thats what I told myself anyway. Then I installed it this morning on my Galaxy Nexus and I have already used Lo-Fi on four photos and Earlybird on a picture of my own kitchen counter that did not need improving. So much for not caring.
The rollout itself was pretty smooth for what its worth. No crashes, no weird permission demands beyond the usual camera and storage stuff, and it looks basically identical to what Ive seen on other peoples iPhones over the years, same filter names, same square crop, same little icons along the bottom. Kevin Systrom apparently said something about wanting the Android version to feel exactly like the iOS one rather than some watered-down port, and credit where its due, it does. Im told over a million people grabbed it in the first half a day alone, which for an app that used to be an iPhone-exclusive flex is kind of funny to think about. All that "sorry, Android doesnt have it" smugness evaporated in one morning.
Heres my actual complaint though, and its a small one. The square crop still bugs me. I get why its there, it was the whole visual identity of the thing from the start, Polaroid nostalgia and all that, but every single photo I try to post gets clipped in some annoying spot and I end up re-taking it three times to get the framing right. My phone shoots in a normal aspect ratio like every other camera on earth and then Instagram just lops off the sides. Minor gripe. Doesnt stop me from using it. Just mildly irritating every single time.
What I actually think is interesting here isnt the filters, its the timing and what it says about where the phone market is right now. Two years ago betting on iPhone-only made total sense, thats where the users with cameras and data plans and the patience to use a photo app actually were. Now Android has genuinely caught up in raw numbers, and a startup that size cant afford to ignore half the market anymore, even if their core users skew Apple. Its the same story as the new iPad that came out a few weeks back with that absurdly sharp screen, everyone in my feed was showing off Retina display screenshots like it was a personal achievement. Different company, different device, same basic lesson: platforms that used to feel like separate universes are bleeding into each other a lot faster than they used to.
Anyway. If you're on Android and youve been feeling left out of the square-photo-with-fake-light-leaks club, go download it. Its free, it took about ninety seconds over my apartments spotty wifi, and it does exactly what everyone always said it does, which is make mediocre photos look like you tried harder than you did. I posted a picture of my cat sitting in a cardboard box and it got more attention in twenty minutes than most things I post get in a week, so draw your own conclusions about what that says about all of us.
One more thing before I forget. If you already had an account from some third-party workaround or from using it on a friends iPhone, the login carries over fine, your followers and everything are intact. I half expected some migration mess and there wasnt one. Small thing but it matters when youve got two years of photos attached to an account you dont want to lose.
Going to go find something else to photograph now that doesnt need a filter to look decent. Might take a while.