The Great Instagram For Windows Phone Photo Taking Controversy Explained

Instagram made it onto the Windows Phone platform today as a beta and immediately, everyone lost their mind.

You see, the Instagram app for Windows Phone defaults to an in-app screen that shows you the photos you have already taken. You can click on a little button to take a photo, but you are then scooted out of the application to the default camera application where you shoot the picture. Then you are scooted back into Instagram.

It’s about as smooth as sandpaper. The iOS experience, for contrast, let’s you quickly shoot a picture inside the application itself, something that is fast, and far more seamless.

People have pointed out the discrepancy, stating variously that you can’t take photos inside of the Windows Phone Instagram application. This is technically true. Others, incensed by the assertion, claim that you can, you just have to exit the application to do so. That’s not quite the same thing.

The shitbag of all of this is that Windows Phone users have waited years for the application to land on their platform in an official capacity. And when it finally did, it was not as good as what the photo sharing service offers to others. You get to wait, and then you get less.

The official line about this is that many Instagram users use photos that they have already taken, and given that Windows Phone devices have other pretty darn good photo taking applications, defaulting in-app to your photo roll makes sense. Not really, as if I am Instagraming a photo I’m hardly fretting about its crispness given that I am about to Sepia its brains out, but even still, it would be nice to have the same flow that I have on other platforms. Don’t make the choice for me, essentially.

Instagram on iOS has been one of the largest mobile application success stories, ever. It worked. The version that Windows Phone users received today – albeit in beta, somehow – is less good than what other platforms have. No matter how you slice it, late and less good isn’t so great.

Top Image Credit: Flickr