Facebook has just introduced an update to its Messenger app that allows sharing of images in even higher resolutions, allowing the users to send and receive 4K images or, to be precise, images in resolution of up to 4,096 x 4,096 pixels. This update comes as a response to many users’ request and the resolution is the highest quality modern smartphones can support. Right now, 4K sharing is available to users in the US, Canada, France, Australia, UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea, with more countries to come in the upcoming weeks.
This happens to be the second major update to Facebook Messenger’s features, following the reimplementation of Messenger Day. Earlier last week, the rumor broke out that Messenger Day might be going away after less than a year after being introduced to Messengers users. Facebook representative later clarified that the feature isn’t actually going away, but is rather being merged with Facebook Stories, a feature that is available on both desktop and mobile and one that was also recently added to groups and pages on this social network. Speaking of updates and changes happening around Facebook and its vast digital ecosystem, the company has been going full steam ahead these couple of months, adding many new features like VR support inside News Feed and even experimenting with the introduction of Explore Feed in select countries that separates friends’ updates from the news coming from pages you follow on Facebook.
As for the image sharing, the company claims it’s on the rise to overtake pure text messages, at least when it comes to Messenger. Therefore, the decision to up the maximum resolution from 2K to 4K is what the company’s hoping to encourage even more image sharing over its mobile app. Sharing your high-resolution photos with friends and family will remain the same, all you have to do is tap the camera roll icon when inside a conversation, choose an image and hit the ‘send’ button. Facebook has also provided several comparison images to show ‘before and after’ quality differences for the new algorithm. You can find out yourself how much the quality of photos has improved in the gallery below.
