Instagram upgrades picture resolution, making pictures look much more crisp

Site has long crushed pictures down into a relatively small size, making them look grainy on modern phones

Tuesday 07 July 2015 12:51 EDT

An employee holds a cup with the Instagram logo at Facebook's corporate headquarters during a media event (Getty Images)

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All Instagram pictures everywhere are about to get far nicer-looking, as the company is finally upgrading its photos to HD.

The site and app have long limited pictures to a 640 by 640 resolution, far more grainy than the screens of modern smartphones. But the site is finally pushing that up to 1080 by 1080 resolution — more than an HD TV.

The change is initially rolling out on the iOS and Android apps, and the web app is still showing pictures at the old size. But it’s likely that the site will upgrade all versions of Instagram to support the more detailed pictures.

Users don’t need to do anything to see the new pictures, while will be automatically rolled out. And they don’t need to do anything to take the pictures, either — Instagram has always captured image at a higher resolution, but has until now squashed them down before sending them out on the app.

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Instagram upgrades picture resolution, making pictures look much more crisp

Site has long crushed pictures down into a relatively small size, making them look grainy on modern phones

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