Android Users Rejoice! Instagram Finally On Google Play

Some 400K Android users have a reason to smile today. Instagram, that amazing photo editing app that has been on iPhone forever, has now come to Android and I can tell you it’s quite good.

It’s easy to see why Instagram took so much time on it because it had to deliver the same wow factor that the iOS one has delivered and also because there was going to be a massive dash for the app when it hit Google Play (formerly the Android Market).

Well, the guys at Instagram were right to anticipate the mad dash because they are reporting that they have been signing up new users on Android at a rate of 2,000 per minute, which is huge.

Instagram, which has grown at a rapid clip over the last 12 month has seen billions of photos edited and shared and has also spawned a number of third party businesses that provide value addition services to Instagram users such as photo printing services, among others.

So what is the Instagram Android app like? Well, I took it for a test drive and it has pretty much the same features as the iOS version except for the user interface which has the characteristic blockish features of Android apps.

But the user experience is pretty much the same and offers most of what the iPhone app has to offer. Instagram now boasts 15 million users on its iOS version of the app alone and with the Android release, this number could very well double.

What may stand in the way of that number doubling is the size of the app, 13MB, and that it requires Android 2.2 and upwards (remember not all Android phones are created equal, unlike the iPhone). That said, Android users can now rejoice that the service is finally accessible on the Android platform and that it does not disappoint on delivering great results.