Instagram is rolling out 1080*1080 photo uploads and consequently higher-quality viewing for its Android and iOS applications. As a result your Instagram feed should look sharper. Previously, the social network capped this at 640*640 pixels meaning that even if your phone was capable of taking higher quality pictures they would be scaled down when they appeared on the feed.
Understandably, when Instagram started, mobile phones didn’t take very good pictures and the filters hid that shortfall nicely but since then camera phones have improved greatly and so have their displays. The service though has still retained that initial constraint and it was starting to feel aged.
We’re rolling out 1080×1080 uploads (and higher-quality viewing) for IG on iOS and Android. Let me know if feed looks a bit sharper today 🙂
— Mike Krieger (@mikeyk) July 6, 2015
This update was tweeted by the co-founder Mike Krieger who also added that Android users would notice improved changes for uploads.
@thalescaravana latest Android adds a bunch of improvements to the image pipeline too, so you should see better upload quality
— Mike Krieger (@mikeyk) July 6, 2015
Before now, Instagram on Android had a well documented issue where an image uploaded to the service was severely compressed affecting both size and quality. This often resulted in coarse and pixellated images and the difference is stark when compared with the images uploaded on the iOS application.
Mike also attributes changes to the latest version of Android that “adds a bunch of improvements to the image pipeline” resulting in better quality uploads.
Are you seeing any changes in quality (sharper images) on your Instagram feed?
