While developers are abandoning Windows Phone and Windows
10 Mobile, Facebook is still committed to the platform, at
least for now. Last week,
Facebook removed Instagram for Windows 10 Mobile from the
Store, and it was a bit surprising because it is one of the
most-used apps on Microsoft’s mobile platform.
Instagram recently received an update on Windows 10, and it
looks like one of the changes implemented by this new version
has compatibility issues on phones, as a result, the company
probably decided to remove the app for Windows phones.
As speculated, Instagram for Windows Phone is once again
available in the Microsoft Store, and the app was apparently
disabled on phones due to compatibility issues. Facebook has
once again released the old version of Instagram for
phones, while the new version is still available for PCs.
It appears that the developers are allowed to publish different
versions of the same app for phone and PC. You can
download Instagram v10.1096.22713.0 on your Windows Phone
from the Microsoft Store. Needless to say, Instagram
on Windows 10 Mobile still works fine, but by the looks of
things, no new updates would be released.
Not too long ago, Instagram released a progressive web app
version of its official app. Instagram’s PWA works on
Windows Phones and it can do almost everything the native
app can, web app looks very similar to the native Android app,
and has all necessary features. PWA uses less data and
runs entirely in a web browser. However, you can’t share
the picture to rival social media platforms, tag users or
add a location, and Instagram Stories doesn’t work either.
While Microsoft has officially confirmed that Windows 10 Mobile
is no longer supported, most of the first and third-party apps
should continue to function. Microsoft Store is better than
ever, and the Progressive Web Apps (PWA) are obviously the
last hope.
Microsoft says that Windows 10 Mobile will continue receiving
security updates and bug fixes until late 2019, and most of the
first-party apps will be still supported but no new major
changes will be pushed.
