14 DAY TRIAL // Skype team has just announced their Android application that allows users to make and receive free voice and video calls has just received a major update that patches some of the issues reported by users.
The most important change and the leitmotif of the update is the low battery consumption, which has suddenly become one of Skype most important advantages.
It we are to believe developers, the latest update for Skype brings “aggressive battery savings,” which is said to allow Android users to leave the application running in the background all day without having to worry about battery life.
According to Skype, in order to make these major changes, its engineers temporarily turned off push notification of group chat messages.
However, the push notification hasn’t been entirely, so those Skype users that wish to continue to take advantage of the group chat feature can go to Settings / Notifications, and check the “Sync group messages...” box.
Skype users who would like to use group chat messages, but don’t want to activate the push notification feature for fear of battery drain may want to wait a little longer, as developers claim that “in the near future, you will be able to receive group chat messages instantly without additional battery impact.”
Skype 4.7 for Android seems to be the first step in a new era for Skype technology. This means that while great improvements have been made under the hood, Skype says the process is not yet complete and that more enhancements will be added in the not so distant future.
In version 4.7, this issue should be solved, so Skype users with devices powered by KitKat platform shouldn’t have any problems regarding this bug.
Furthermore, developers managed to fix the audio and video calling on tablets that do not have Bluetooth. This feature seemed to have been broken for some users, but now it should work as intended.
Last but not least, Skype for Android now lists user’s Windows Live Messenger contacts in the Skype (default) view, not just the All contacts view.
Those who already have the application installed on their devices should update immediately to the latest version in order to take advantage of the new features.
New users can now download Skype for Android 4.7 for free via Google Play Store. The application should be fully compatible with all devices powered by Android 2.1 and up.