Instagram For Android Gets 3D Touch-Like Feature

If you have seen the promotional materials for the new iPhones then the words 3D Touch might have caught your attention, this is a new feature that Apple introduced first with the Apple Watch and brought over a better version to the new iPhones. The idea is to provide users with a completely different input method that’s based on how hard they press down on the display. There’s aren’t a lot of Android smartphones that have this feature but Instagram today updated its Android app to bring a 3D Touch-like experience.

3D Touch requires specific hardware that’s present in the new iPhones, developers can tap into it to bring the new interactions to their apps. Instagram was one of the very first apps for iOS to support this feature.

Instagram has replicated that experience on Android with some software trickery. On the iPhone the user will tap with more force if they want to quickly pop up the image and a get a preview, that’s basically a long press, so that’s how the interaction is differentiated on Android now.

Long press on an image in Instagram for Android search results now and the image preview will pop up, this feature doesn’t really need a force sensitive touch screen to work, so users simply need to drag their finger away from the center of the image to shrink it back down to thumbnail size. Drag the finger over one of the share buttons to instantly share it without even having to lift the finger.

This new 3D Touch-like feature is available in version 7.13.0 of Instagram for Android that’s now available from the Play Store.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Android, Apps, Instagram