Instagram, the popular free iPhone (News - Alert) photo app that lets its users apply various filters to their mobile photographs and share with the online community, is now getting ready to make its long awaited debut on the Android OS.

While there are many similar apps in the Android Market (now referred to as Google (News - Alert) Play), they all lack the ability to provide the large community that Instagram boasts. Mobile photography is massive, and many “iPhoneographers” use Instagram to display their artwork and have helped turn it into what it is today - a service with nearly 200 million uploaded pictures and over 27 million registered users.

But it is too little, too late? Android (News - Alert) users have waited a year for the service to show up on their mobile devices. During that time, applications such as Camera Zoom FX and Camera360 have attempted to fill the void left by the mobile app giant. The developers of Instagram will need to provide Android users with something different in order to make up for the lost time, and by the sounds of it, they are doing just that.

Instagram Co-Founder Kevin Systrom ran a prototype of the app on a Samsung (News - Alert) Galaxy Nexus, noting that the app isn't quite ready for a full demo and disclosed information than an upcoming Android launch is “coming soon” and “in some ways it's better than our iPhone app.”

Systrom also added that the Android app is incredibly fast, works great on a range of larger screens, and has sharing functionality with Twitter (News - Alert), Facebook, Tumblr and other social networks. 

Apple recently highlighted Instagram as its “App of the Year”, and Android users won't have to wait long to find out why that is.