Instagram brings 3D Touch-style feature to Android

The ability to detect pressure in touch screens and turn it into functionality: whether you see it as a gimmick or not, we can’t deny we do need more layers of interaction to make smartphones flow better. We love our long presses and and right clicks, but these are input methods we haven’t bee exploiting to their fullest in the mobile universe. Sure, you can move apps around and pull up menus, but that can’t be it… right?

The good news is it’s not so hard to replicate this feature, even if Android’s ability to recognize force and do something with it is not evolved yet. It can still be imitated with a long press. That is exactly what Instagram did with the Android version of the app (7.13.0).

In Apple’s implementation, Instagram is able to show a preview of an image when pressing harder on photo icons within the Search section. It works similarly in the newest version of the Instagram Android app, but you don’t have to press harder…. just press longer.

The feature seems to work like a charm, but as it goes with these updates, they roll out periodically. You could either wait a around for the Google Play Store to push it to your device or you could opt to manually install this APK file.

What do you guys think of this added functionality, though? I feel like it still needs to evolve and become more adopted by the community. At this point it seems people are a bit confused by it. But that is why I am not too upset that Apple is making it mainstream first. Keep in mind the iPhone maker is not good at introducing new technology, but they certainly have a talent for making it popular.