Instagram has announced a new feature to help you quickly take excellent photos of yourself or the people around you, emulating the portrait mode that we’re seeing on most new smartphones. The feature is called Focus and gives your shots a professional, softly blurred look and makes them quick and easy to share.
If you’ve used any other phone with a portrait mode, you know exactly how this works. You’ll select the Focus feature inside of Instagram while taking a picture, then find your subject with either your front or rear camera. The person will stay in focus while Instagram applies a slight blur effect to the background, emphasizing the subject in a very pleasant way.
You can still get creative with stickers and filters and everything else Instagram offers after the fact, so you can expect this to become very common on supported devices.
That last sentence will be the catch, though. It’s supported on all of Apple’s modern lineup of phones, covering the iPhone SE up to the current crop of devices, but Instagram only says it will work on “select Android devices.” It’s probably a safe bet things like the Galaxy S9 and Google Pixel 2 will be included, but it’s not clear if that stretches back to previous flagships or less popular devices like, say, a Moto Z2 Force.
If you’re a big Instagram user with a less common Android phone, give it a spin and let us know if it works!
Born in southern Alabama, Jared spends his working time selling phones and his spare time writing about them. The Android enthusiasm started with the original Motorola Droid, but the tech enthusiasm currently covers just about everything. He likes PC gaming, Lenovo's Moto Z line, and a good productivity app.