Apple often gets first dibs when it comes to app releases, but Android users’ wait for one of the hottest new apps out there is now over – Vine is now available for Android phones running Ice Cream Sandwich and up. And loyal Galaxy S3 users seething at the fact that they had to wait for months to get the popular looping-video creator on their phones might be ameliorated by the fact that Vine has included a few unique features in this version. For phones that support it, you can now zoom in, and there’s a juiced-up offline browsing mode.
Vine noted that the iOS version and Android version aren’t quite synced up yet. “Though we’ve been very focused on releasing Vine for Android, we’ve continued to release updates and add new features to the iOS app. As a result, the two apps are not perfectly in sync, but that won’t be the case for long. Over the coming weeks, you’ll see frequent updates with new features – including front-facing camera, search, mentions, and hashtags, and the ability to share to Facebook – as well as bug fixes and performance improvements. Of course, this is only the beginning – we have exciting plans for features that could exist only on Android.”
This means Vine for Android won’t have some of the latest features introduced on iOS, so if Apple users still want something to gloat about, now’s the time to rub it in that this version is still inferior. But it’s likely that the two versions will resemble each other more closely very soon.
Vine is still a young app, but it’s already expanding like crazy, and it established a branded partnership with “Peanuts” last month. Letting Android users in on the fun will give the platform plenty of new potential users, and help it become a mainstay like Instagram.
