It was once thought that Instagram would never come to Windows Phone users, at least not in an official capacity, but times have since changed.
A steady trickle of apps have begun offering Instagram compatibility, offering many of the same features of a first-party app. Rudy Huyn’s 6Tag is likely the best of the bunch, having been developed to mimic the Windows Phone aesthetic while maintaining close functionality to the iOS and Android apps.
Huyn recently brought out 6Sec, a Vine app for Windows Phone, and is now considered one of the forerunners in independent Windows Phone app development. 6Tag allows users to upload photos or videos, the former with original Instagram filters. The app even offers them linear and radial blur and tilt-shift effects from the official apps, and should satiate Windows Phone users’ desire for uploading pictures of meals with exaggerated colours.
Instagram has kept mum about its endorsement of 6Tag and its band of Windows Phone allies, which includes Instance and Instagraph, but has yet to shut it down. The apps exist in a precarious position, though, as a recent terms of service change shut down third-party apps for nearly a day. Huyn says 6Tag is immune to such changes — he has reverse engineered the actual Instagram API — but there’s really nothing to stop the Facebook-owned startup from raining on everyone’s parade at some point.
In the meantime, 6Tag offers the best Instagram experience for Windows Phone, though it does cost nearly $3, in two separate in-app purchases, to lift ads and unlock unlimited uploads. The free version of the app only allows one upload per day. Once posted, photos can be shared to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and others.
Huyn just tweeted that 6Tag was downloaded over 50,000 times in its first day on the Windows Phone Store, proving that there are plenty of people using the platform and looking for great apps.
[source]Windows Phone Store[/source]
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