Instagram is finally displaying photos in HD, also fixed horrible compression on Android

We’re almost at a loss for words. With the entire mobile industry moving from 720p, to full HD and even 2K displays, we’d often times wonder when Instagram was finally going to catch up. A social network that puts such a heavy focus on photos, it was baffling that on both their mobile apps and on the web, photos were only displayed in 640×640 resolution. To make matters worse, uploads on Android devices suffered from god-awful compression not present in iOS counterpart, something we covered in a post from a little over a year ago.

It’s been a long time coming, but Instagram Co-Founder Mike Krieger revealed that photos displayed on both Android and iOS are getting a much needed bump to 1080×1080. So, starting today, expect things to start looking a lot more sharp in-app. It’s all done on the back end, so don’t bother looking for an update in the Play Store. What about that compression issue we’re always going on about? While, it appears that was fixed in an update to the app sometime last week, so if you’ve uploaded anything since then, you may have noticed your photos already looking a lot less artifact-y.

So, anyone who was holding out on posting photos to Instagram because any of the above issues, our time has finally come. Have at it.