Instagram for iOS app updated with landscape mode and more

Instagram is wildly popular, but has notably lacked a few features that users have been asking for. Today, the company updated its app for iOS, adding a couple of those much-requested features, perhaps the best being the addition of landscape mode, allowing users to flip their smartphone in a horizontal orientation when desired.

The new support for landscape mode works for both recording videos and taking images, being more relevant to the former, the launch of which had produced a fair bit of criticism and issues related to the lack of horizontal orientation support. As The Next Web notes, this feature had originally been intended to launch with it, but there was a problem with the recorded videos not being flipped along with the changed orientation.

Beyond that, the second biggest change with this update is the Cinema stabilization feature being added for the front-facing camera, which we noted above. This feature aims to reduce the shakiness and wobbles that are so common with videos taken with a smartphone. As such, those who record videos of themselves the camera on the front of their phone will benefit from the feature.

The video feature for Instagram was announced on June 20 at a Facebook product event, among some other features. The feature allows for 15-seconds of video recording, and offers 15 filters that can be applied in the same way effects are added to photographs. The change log doesn't specify what the other changes are, aside from "many other improvements and bug fixes." As such, iOS users might notice some other niggling issues they've had being corrected after updating.

The app is available now for iOS users over at the App Store, weighing in at 14.5MB in size and being pegged at version 4.0.2. Users will need to be running iOS 5.0 or later. There's no word on when Android users will also see the feature roll out, but hopefully we won't have to wait too long. Stay tuned, and we'll keep you updated!

SOURCE: The Next Web