[Review] Instagram – Photo Sharing gets Photography Strength with Nokia Lumia 1020

If you have owned an iOS or Android smartphone for quite a couple of years, you most probably be knowing what we are talking about. Instagram is one of the first and most used photo sharing app after making some predefined image filters.

Photo Sharing now gets Photography Strength with
Nokia Lumia 1020

After a very very long time been spent on iOS and Android platforms, Instagram decided to reach Windows Phone platform. There is no doubt that huge follow ups from Nokia may have done so. Nokia have been pursuing for their customers to get Instagram on their partnered smartphone OS, the Windows Phone. Nokia had also put their own ball into the Windows Phone store with the title “#2InstaWithLove” to show the interest on behalf of their customers.

Well after launching last month for Windows Phone, It’s been praised like it was on any other platform. Specially when I used it on Nokia Lumia 1020, I sure believe that it gets a real deal to be run on a smartphone that actually is more towards photography purposes. With all its special filters, Instagram seems to be more healthier with quality images from a camera like the one in Lumia 1020. The app itself brings a lot of stuff to play with on Windows Phone as it brings most of the features to the platform and may also add more in future as the app still is in the store with the “Beta” tag.

After long time spending only on the devices, Instagram also launched a web portal for the users to sign-in and interact with the photos in their feed page as well as they can explore the community. But still there is no way to sign-up or register with a new account. So with the official Instagram app on Windows Phone you start with one of the two options which is “Register” or “Sign in”

Without a registered account there is no content for you to view on Instagram. After signing in you get a full control of your account that includes taking new shots or choosing from phone’s gallery to post and share, viewing feed from the users you follow on Instagram, can see what’s currently popular in the community, your notifications and your profile detail where you can even change change your profile settings and preferences.

Features like editing your profile in an app is usually skipped to be in detail but Instagram brings almost everything for you in your profile that you can change/update right away. It could also be due to a reason that an Instagram App is the primary medium to take full control because web portal does not allow to do most of the things.

In your profile, you can edit almost every thing including your name, username, URL, bio, choose whether your posts are public or private, change password, change private information like your registered email address, phone or gender. You can check who is following you as well as who are you following.

App settings, that you can change, include sharing preferences where you can tell on which social network you want to share your photo e.g. facebook, twitter, tumblr, flickr, foursquare VKontakte. You can turn on/off notifications specific events e.g. like notifications, comments notifications and contact notifications. Additionally you can review content from others what you have liked on Instagram.

And now the main factor why would you want to use Instagram application on your smartphone? Of course for not only viewing photos posted by others. As concerned with the version on other platforms, Instagram now supports video sharing as well as photos. But currently in this beta version on Windows Phone, only photo upload is supported by Instagram. You can choose either from your existing images in the phone or can take new picture from the camera as provided by the app.

After choosing a picture or taking it via camera, Instagram provides you the interface to crop/scale it to 1:1 aspect ratio. Well that’s what it is their standard since the day one so you will need to adjust your photo within a 3×3 grid frame. Next you will choose a filter to be applied on your photo. Following are the filters with their names on the list.

XPro-II, Earlybird, Rise, Amaro, Hudson, Lo-fi, Sutro, Toaster, Brannan, Inkwell, Walden, Hefe, Nashville, 1977 and some more.

Linear and Radial Tilt-Shift blur effects can be applied from the top quick tools where you can also apply framing border, rotate the picture or apply brightness. Once done, your photo is ready to be posted an shared on Instagram. Additionally you can also share the picture on other social networks and including Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and photo/video sharing community Flickr.

That’s what I have explored with Instagram last night. I’d definitely add here that photo quality really does mater and Lumia 1020 was really supportive when it comes to sharing photos on the web.

If you have used Instagram on Windows Phone and/or on other platforms. Do tell us about your experience below in the comments. Or you should use it now if you are one of those taking picture around and sharing them on the go right away with their friends on the web.

Download

Download Instagram from the Windows Phone store. Or just bring up your Windows Phone closer to the following QR code to take yourself to the Instagram app on the store. You will need to open “Vision” from your Windows Phone search key.