Instagram for Android: Fun, but missing some iOS features

04.04.2012

The the process of capturing, editing and sharing a photo in Instagram for Android isn't always what it's like on the iPhone. On the Galaxy Nexus, things were pretty similar, though: Clicking the Camera/Share button in the center of the Android app's toolbar brought me directly to a picture-taking screen. Just as on my iPhone, I had the option to either view the existing gallery of photos on my phone (represented on Android by a box with a mountain in it, rather than the interlocking squares on the iOS app). I also had the option to switch to the front-facing camera, turn the flash on or off, and cancel out of camera mode entirely.

But the camera mode experience on the Galaxy Blaze 4G didn't match up to what I experienced on the Galaxy Nexus. Yes, this is Android fragmentation at its finest! On the Galaxy Blaze 4G, when I tried to take a photo, a dialog box asked me to pick a source: Camera or Photo Gallery. When I picked Camera, I was switched to the Galaxy Blaze's native photo app. That familiar Instagram camera interface I've come to know and love was gone.

You can tweak these settings to force the app to take pictures itself by going to the app's settings on the homescreen. This only seems to work on certain phones, however. On the LG Marquee, the app crashed when I tried to open the Instagram camera. Instead, I had to take my photo in the native camera app, crop it, and only then was I switched back to the Instagram user interface.

Then again, maybe it doesn't matter much where you shoot your Instagram photos on Android right now. That's because, unfortunately, Instagram app for Android is missing a feature recently added to the iOS app: The ability to view a live preview of a filter before you shoot. You can still add one after you shoot, but I've gotten used to being able to mess around with filters before I take my shot.

Also missing from the Android app is the Tilt Shift/Blur feature, which lets you selectively blur out certain areas of your photos. This function is really cool, as you can fake a shallow depth of field in your photos or blur out the background of your photo to focus on a single object.