Instagram is upgrading the quality of its photographs to take full advantage of the iPhone 6 Plus. This is a welcome enhancement for users of Apple's biggest mobile phone, who have been complaining about the inferior quality of Instagram photos on their devices.
As first noted by The Verge, the photo-sharing app began rolling out photographs that were served at 1080 x 1080 pixels last week—a noted upgrade from its longtime size of 640 x 640. The reason for the change is to better serve users of the iPhone 6 Plus, which has a screen with both a greater width and pixel density than that of other iPhones.
Prior to the iPhone 4, the screens of Apple's phones could only render images natively at up to pixels 320 pixels wide. Starting with the 4, iPhones had higher definition screens that could render images twice as wide as the previous display, now spanning 640 pixels. The iPhone 6's screen got another bump to 750 pixels wide. However, the iPhone 6 Plus's oversized hardware increased the density of the Retina Display enough to gain the ability to render images at a 1080 pixel width.
In a statement to WIRED, an Instagram spokesperson confirmed the upgrade. "We are gradually rolling out 1080 [pixel images] on both iOS and Android, and most people should have it."
However, it is curious how long it took Instagram to adapt to the ever-improving landscape of HD devices. Apple released its iPhone 6 Plus last September, meaning it took Instagram more than ten months to upgrade its app to take advantage of the latest hardware.
For Android users, the wait has been even longer, and some Android users are still left behind with this update. Android devices have had high pixel density displays for years. The popular HTC One M7, released in March, 2013 already had display that could natively render images with a width of 1080 pixels. More recently, the LG G4, released globally in June, is capable of rendering images at 1440 pixels—33.3 percent larger than Instagram’s new image size. Instagram has historically made Apple hardware a priority. The app was iOS-only at launch, and it took the company nearly a year and a half to release an Android version.1
Part of the rationale for keeping images small could be performance and bandwidth concerns, rather than apathy towards Android users. An Instagram spokesperson declined to discuss the reasoning behind the small images, but Facebook, which acquired Instagram in 2012, has argued that fast load times are essential to user engagement. When the social platform announced its Instant Articles feature in May, Facebook brass were quick to highlight how much faster the service made consuming news.
By limiting Instagram's photographs to 1080 pixels, the app can help reduce the amount of lag users experience when scrolling through their stream, especially in areas with slow data connections. But even on fast connections or when using a laptop, users will not be able to browse Instagram viewing the highest resolution images possible.
1UPDATE 3:10 PM ET 7/7/15: This story has been updated to accurately describe Android Instagram photo dimensions—it formally referred to Android landscape dimensions.
