3D touch is the relatively new tech that ships with the new generation of iPhones. It is a hardware based where it actually features a touch sensitive layer that is pressure sensitive hence allows these iPhones to perform 2 tricks: Peek and Pop.
On the new iPhones, a peek gesture is made by slightly pressing the screen to preview a content and continued pressing activates the pop gesture that allows you to make the content appear full-screen. This new functionality forced developers to update their apps to include these new gestures and this includes Instagram.
In the latest update for Instagram for Android (ver. 7.13.0), the company has sort of ported that 3D functionality for the app. In this case however, there is only the peek gesture but no pop gesture. After updating and light pressing on a photo, the photo pops as a preview. It looks something like this.
The feature is indeed gimmicky but it is kinda cool Instagram decided to port the functionality from the iOS app to its Android sibling. You can still tap on photos to view them full-screen although it would be interesting to see how it will work on a droid with a touch sensitive screen like the Huawei Mate S.
The update was not available at the time of writing on the Play Store in my location but there is a way to update it if you can’t wait to try it. Head over to APK Mirror to download the apk and proceed to update the app.
