The mobile Instagram app is finally enhancing the size of pictures that users are allowed to post. This means opening the door to much more detailed images accepted by the photo sharing service.
Other competitor Android and iOS apps are being updated in order to store and display 1080 pixels by 1080 photos and the Instagram is finally joining the trend. It is not clear yet when Instagram expects to finish rolling out this update. The spokeswoman for Instagram also declined to clarify if the photo resolution improvement will also be available in the desktop version of the service.
Since its launch in 2010, Instagram had kept the image sizes capped at 640 pixels by 640 pixels. In the year 2012 Instagram was bought by Facebook for $1 billion and today it is estimated to have around 300 million active users. At the time when Instagram came on the market most mobile phones couldn't snap larger images anyways. However, as more and more people own smartphone featuring better cameras nowadays, this restriction became increasingly noticeable.
The enhancement of the 640 x 640 archaic photo resolution was long due and the need to move with the times forced Instagram to finally address this very issue and to give users the ability to upload larger images. Photos sent to the image sharing app are being stored now in 1080 x 1080 size but these higher-resolution pictures are not yet being displayed at their full size by Instagram's Web page. You can only locate the large pictures if you research on the Instagram page source code. This is only the first step in preparation to making a full switch to the greater size in nearly future. Both iOS and Android uploads are being stored in the 1080 x 1080 resolution now.
When the change will move beyond the code, this will be a pretty big step in image sharing on the popular Instagram social media network. Users will be able to make better use of the image capture capabilities of their mobile devices. While the Facebook owned social media network is struggling to better position itself on the market and encourage users to use it in order to document the world's places and events, the archaic photo resolution was clearly staying in the way. 640 pixels were not really enough to document anything.
With the boost in quality of the smartphone cameras and improvements in data upload speeds, it was clearly the high time for Instagram to finally enhance the upload size of pictures. Today, our screens can handle much more, and it is refreshing to see that the popular social network is catching up with the times.
