Modern smartphones have long had no problems with photo and video quality. Even if you buy some inexpensive device with a minimum set of cameras and simple software, you can be sure that in sufficient lighting conditions it will give a completely acceptable result. Therefore, even the class of camera phones revived by manufacturers today does not enjoy the popularity that it gained 10-15 years ago. However, all this evidence collapses, if you just start Instagram and try to write down a story.
Are you shooting a story in Instagram from Android? Prepare for problems
For some unknown reason, the stories written in Instagram on Android are always of rather mediocre quality. Therefore, users of the 'green robot' invariably have a question, but, in fact, why do iPhone stories turn out better? Having received no answer, those for whom Instagram is the main platform for self-expression, simply switched to iPhone, leaving users Android alone with this problem. At some point, it even became possible to distinguish who is maintaining a profile from iPhone, and who – from Android. Moreover, even if you have the top-end Galaxy S20 Ultra with a 100 megapixel camera, the result will still be worse than that of some iPhone SE.
Why do we need API on Android
Left – without API, in the middle – with API Camera1, right – with API Camera2
This is due to the API. What is an API? Simply put, this is a kind of driver for various hardware components, including the camera. These drivers are constantly being improved and thanks to them the smartphone starts to work better than without them at all. For example, Google uses the Camera2 API by default for camera. This is the newest version of the drivers, which provides the highest quality shooting. Check out how photos taken with a non-API camera look like with the Camera1 API and Camera2 API. The difference is enormous. But what does Instagram have to do with it?
The fact is that smartphone manufacturers often refuse to use Google's standard APIs, creating their own instead. This is a completely logical practice, since only the vendors themselves know how best to make the camera of their smartphone take the highest quality pictures. But here's the problem – Instagram nothing is known about it. Therefore, he simply uses the same API Camera2, which is embedded in Android by default, but for which the camera of a particular smartphone is not adapted from the word at all.
What's the best way to shoot a story in Instagram
iPhone is more preferable to maintain Instagram than Android
Therefore, if you shoot a video with a standard smartphone camera, and then upload it to Instagram from memory, the quality will be noticeably better. This is due to the fact that when recording, the device will use drivers that ensure the camera's operability, and will do its job well. By the way, for the same reason, in many applications, you can shoot only at normal width without the ability to switch to a macro module or an ultra-wide-angle lens. It's just that developers can't take into account the specifics of all smartphones available on the market, and manufacturers cannot take into account the specifics of all applications available on Google Play. Because of this, a vicious circle turns out, from which you can break out only by going to iPhone.
It turns out that everything rests on the very fragmentation that is not on iOS and which is a scourge Android. Apple creates uniform algorithms, mechanisms and drivers for all their smartphones, for which developers simply customize their applications. As a result, the quality of stories captured on iPhone is much higher than on Android. And thanks to deeper integration of iOS and Instagram, which became possible due to the initial simplicity of the OS from Apple, the algorithms of the social network do not compress photos and videos from iPhone, which makes them look even better.