Instagram for Android has finally arrived. The reigning Apple "App of the Year" made its iPhone debut in 2010, and has accumulated a whopping 30 million users in its short life. Instagram's premise is simple: Users snap a photo and apply a variety of retro-style filters to imbue their shots with a "studied hipster cool." And photos on Instagram, unlike those other photography apps produce, are socially shared with followers who can click a heart to show their approval, or leave comments. On Tuesday, after 17 months of anticipation, Android users were finally able to join the photo-filter fun, and the app was downloaded more than a million times in a single day. Was it worth the wait?
It lives up to the buzz: The Android version of Instagram is "largely the same as the Apple equivalent," says Matt Warman at Britain Telegraph, and that's a good thing. While it's true that the application's artsy filters make your phone's shots look "dramatically" better, the real secret to the platform's success is its unrivaled "sense of community." Indeed, "plenty of others on Android tried to fill the void [created] by Instagram's absence, but none have succeeded."
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