Yahoo’s Flickr is about to punish the popular photo-sharing iPhone app Instagram for not releasing an Android version yet. Flickr launched its Android app Wednesday — complete with Instagram-like filters.
The new Android app brings the Flickr photo stream to Google’s mobile OS. The company has included a new activity stream for viewing photos — one that’s essentially a newsfeed of activity among your Flickr friends. You can browse photo albums or check out the albums of friends.
“A photo is more than just a few pixels,” Flickr Product Manager Markus Spiering said at a press event at Flickr’s headquarters in San Francisco. “It’s also the context.”
Viewing an image on Flickr’s Android app is a different experience compared to its iPhone app. The Android app adds features such as likes, comments, photo data and a map showing where the photo was taken. Users can swipe left or right to browse a photo album. There is also a fullscreen experience for browsing photos that includes a slideshow feature.
The core feature of the app, of course, is photo-taking. Flickr has developed a new viewfinder screen (see above). But there’s one feature that will catch everybody’s attention: photo filters.
The photo filters feature is almost identical to that of Instagram. The app comes with 10 filters that Spiering says are designed to “beautify” photos. They’re automatically uploaded to Flickr but can also be shared via Twitter, Facebook and email.
The filters are Android-only for now, but we doubt it will be long until they make their way to Flickr’s iPhone app.
Flickr has 68 million registered users that have uploaded more than six billion photos. But newcomer Instagram has momentum and a very loyal user base. This should make for an interesting contest.
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