Skype for Windows Phone 8 Preview 2.1 Now Available

On Wednesday, Skype announced the availability of a new flavor of the Skype for Windows Phone 8 mobile client, still tagged as a preview release.

The new app iteration, available for download through the Windows Phone Store as version 2.1.0.241, was meant to provide users with better reliability and performance.

According to the development team, the main focus in this release was on the background notifications and calling.

Furthermore, the team worked on resolving some of the issues that the application has been causing on devices.

“We have also temporarily disabled the People Hub integration as it was causing issues with device stability. We are working with the Windows Phone team to resolve the issue and to enable the integration again in a future release,” the team notes in a blog post.

The new application flavor also arrives on devices with an updated chat keyboard, which features improved autocomplete / autocorrect, for faster typing on the go.

Moreover, the development team notes that buddies from Windows Live Messenger are now labeled in the People list.

The team also added a new option in the new Skype for Windows Phone 8 release, so as to enable toast notifications for Windows Live Messenger buddies.

There is also the disabled People Hub integration that will be observed in the new app iteration, complemented by a series of fixes and enhancements meant to deliver a better experience to all users.

Some of the fixed issues from the previous release include:

- Reliability - Significantly improved the reliability of presence and chat and call notifications when the app is closed.
- Calling - Improved call reliability.
- Chat - In some cases, chat messages would appear in incorrect order. Chat messages will now appear in correct order, by timestamp.
- Localization - Corrected links to some webpages.

As mentioned above, the app is now available for download through the Windows Phone Store. Users are also encouraged to provide feedback on their experience with the new release, so that further improvements could be added.